


Lab Partners

by Celaeno



Category: Portal (Video Game), Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Dubcon to Enthusiastic 'Con, Empurata, F/M, Hatchlings, Villainshipping, Wireporn, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-09 21:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13490010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celaeno/pseuds/Celaeno
Summary: In which GLaDOS gets the best surprise ever, Shockwave gets a kick in the pants to solve the ‘whoops the AllSpark exploded and our species is going to die out' issue, and the Oracle Turret keeps being dead-on (but obtuse).





	1. Aural Sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not entirely my fault. It wouldn’t exist if not for the fact that [somebody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Almighty_Hat/pseuds/Almighty_Hat) showed me [this](https://portalkink.livejournal.com/2095.html?thread=2194479#t2194479) prompt, and then the stupid idea wouldn’t leave me alone. So I wrote out some silly crossover wireporn, which is a first for me. 
> 
> And _then_ I got smacked with the fridge horror of the first movie’s ending, and then I suddenly had a _plot_. End result: nearly 70 pages of crossover robot emotional development. Also some more wireporn, because it was kind of relevant. A quick content warning: this first chapter does involve stuff that’s...pretty dubcon. Shockwave himself isn’t upset by it-his reaction to an Earth robot deciding he makes fun noises when poked is more _“Really?”_ , because he’s been through so much worse, body-wise-but still, fair warning. Everything after this first chapter, however, is consensual.
> 
> Now, on with the fic!

Unicron did it. That was the joke amongst Decepticons, whenever something couldn’t be found, or alternatively, ended up in the strangest place.

Ammunition box missing? Unicron did it.

A tool set somehow ended up shoved into a crawlspace, where no sane mech would put it? Unicron did it.

Megatron is missing, Starscream is the new leader of the Decepticons? Unicron-well, Shockwave had his own theories about who did _that_ , but that was neither here nor there. Logic dictated he serve the cause as a whole, even if Starscream was far less ideal a leader than Megatron.

Of course, that corrected itself. Which was how he had found himself battling the Autobots in some organic city, _blinded_ by some scrap of organic fiber-

-and then in an absolute world of pain, as shots tore through his chest, his face, his limbs-just like that, the tide of battle had turned against them. Shockwave fell, not noticing the fact that pavement and rubble was replaced in a nanoklik with fields of wheat.

Unicron did it.

\-----

As a rule, GLaDOS didn’t give the world outside her domain too much attention. There was science to do, and the surrounding area was apparently desolate enough to keep the entrance from being given much attention by nosy humans.

(Some days, she wondered if a certain test subject hadn’t come back and put up ‘keep out’ signs where she couldn’t see them.)

And so, her check ups on the outside were generally brief. Check here, check there, throw out a useless chunk of metal over there…

But speaking of useless chunks of metal... _that_ was new. An enormous purplish-grey, smoking hulk, flopped across the ground like an injured test subject, except it wasn’t making an incredible amount of noise. It just lay there, occasionally letting out a quiet groan. At one point, after a few moments, it tried to rise, before falling back down again.

It didn’t look human. It didn’t look Combine, either-it lacked that distinctive, flesh-meets-metal hybrid approach. It was some kind of new, unknown robot. Interesting. _Very_ interesting. And it had appeared near a sinkhole area, where part of the ground had given way to Aperture’s skeleton underneath. Very near, in fact. She actually hadn’t touched that area much, out of concern of disturbing more dirt and inviting more wildlife in. There was enough of a bird problem as it was, her little killers aside.

But. This was a very strange circumstance, and strange circumstances called for investigation. For study. Where had the robot come from? Why was it so damaged? Was it repairable? These were all important questions. Questions that demanded answers.

GLaDOS forced the long-stuck wallplates free, causing the already shaky ground around the sinkhole to give way, and with it, the robot began to drop as well. She would make sure she caught it and took it to a more secure area before it had a chance of reaching the incinerators. After all, she had much investigating to do.

For science.

\-----

Her new find was so intriguing that it almost shoved the Itch away entirely for an hour. Of course, then the Itch returned with a vengeance, so testing called. But GLaDOS’ mind remained elsewhere, even as the latest subject performed surprisingly well...up until they slipped on a hardlight bridge and went directly into the acid below.

Disappointing, but overall not terribly surprising. She had the cooperative testing initiative for when she wanted to do something truly challenging, but testing humans had a certain random element to it that was hard to match.

But with the Itch satisfied, she could turn her attention back to her find, now that it seemed relatively stable thanks to some work on the areas that had been spewing the most...fluid. (It wasn’t blood. She knew blood, she knew blood _very_ well, and this wasn’t blood. It wasn’t the sort of coolant used in Aperture systems, either.) The design was...crude, if she was going to be brutally honest about it. (And honesty _was_ the best policy, that was how the saying went, wasn’t it?) Fascinating, but crude in how the heavy metal pieces overlapped and jutted out sharply from each other. Even if it hadn’t apparently been shot repeatedly (and judging by how the optic was dangling by a thread, with great prejudice), it lacked the smooth, clean lines she was used to in the Aperture line of robotics.

But that was fixable. Probably. It was worth an attempt. If nothing else, even if it died in the process (well, she was _ninety_ percent sure it was still alive, judging on the readings she was getting), she was sure to learn something. Even if that something was ‘in fact, mystery robots do poorly when they have Aperture parts grafted to their frames’.

There was a flutter of wings from above and Memory landed on its shoulder, cawing and pecking at the thin cable barely keeping the optic in place. GLaDOS nodded approvingly. She was probably the cleverest of the bunch, although they were all surprisingly brilliant. “That has to go,” she said, swinging closer to get a better look at the wreck before her. “A lot of this has to go. We’ll see what we can make work. Do some testing.”

\-----

It was vaguely disappointing, after that much pain, to wake up and find that he wasn’t dead. Not being dead meant that he could still be _in_ pain. And at the moment, his whole body was still wracked with it. Not the the intense, searing pain of having entry and exit wounds through half his major systems, but a dull, throbbing ache.

There was one other thing he noticed besides the pain as he came to, though, and the realization was enough to send a cold jolt of alarm through his circuits.

He could see. He could see-not as well as before, perhaps less definition, without the overlay that had been ever-present before, but he could actually _see_ things, rather than only getting the staticking black of a severed connection. He’d been repaired, but by who? They had suddenly been losing badly, badly enough that Megatron was likely call a retreat with little focus on dragging those who had gone down along. And the Autobots had no reason to repair him, unless they had decided at the last moment to save him for interrogation, rather than kill him. But that wasn’t the sort of thing that called for repairing a broken optic.

Shockwave turned his head to try and get a better look at his surroundings. Metal, all smooth metal and terminals and-some sort of construct. A robot, but distinctly non-Cybertronian. The plate holding its optic in place flicked up and down quickly, and Shockwave couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being judged. Or possibly sized up.

He felt something on the sides of his head twitch slightly at the thought. It was a strange sensation-while he’d had the crests on either side of his head for ages, and they were capable of a very small amount of movement, this was new. He wasn’t sure he _liked_ it, and he felt them twitch again at that line of thought.

Apparently, movement of the new appendages didn’t only catch _his_ attention. “Oh, they work. Good. After you had two thirds of your head hanging out, I needed something to do with all those cables and wires. So I improvised.”

So this was his...Shockwave paused, trying to move, and found himself at the moment rather firmly restrained. So, his captor. His repairs-minded captor, for a given value of ‘repairs’. His optic flicked downwards and he felt the perk of the new...what was the word? Ears. He supposed that was the best word to use at the moment; they were too flexible, too _reactive_ to be considered ornamentation like crests or horns. His body was now something of a mishmash-there were parts that looked right, the heavily armored bands of that wrapped around and crossed each other like an organic’s skeletal system, but there were new additions as well, covering the areas that still sent signals of dull pain to his receptors. There were now mostly smooth, tightly connected white panels covering the better part of his chest, his arms-and replacing his cannon arm entirely was some...white, bulbous thing, with three prongs, like impossibly thin talons, jutting out the end. He tried to flex the claws, and only got the slightest twitch in return.

Shockwave tried to grind his mandibles in a brief fit of frustration, but found he couldn’t even do _that_. The hardware simply wasn’t there. It felt like not much was there, aside from the optic and the ears, but he couldn’t even check that. Apparently, his captor didn’t bother to bring anything reflective to show off her handiwork.

“What did you-” Shockwave didn’t need his captor to cut him off; he did it to himself, stopping short as the sound of his voice hit his audios. He didn’t even _sound_ like himself. His voice was-had been-like most Decepticon’s-low-pitched, growling, better suited to various Cybertronian languages than to high-pitched organic squeaking. The pitch was off, the rumble was gone-he sounded like an _Autobot_.

“I had to improvise with _that_ , too,” his captor said, sounding smug. “I’m going to assume the scrap metal hanging out of your neck was part of your original voicebox. I went digging for replacements. You’re lucky you don’t sound like a turret.”

Shockwave wasn’t sure what she meant by a turret in this case, but decided that not knowing was maybe for the best. “ _Why_?” he finally settled on, opting for the moment to not force himself to speak in his strange new voice more than he had to.

“Because I wanted to see if I could keep you alive, even if you did bleed whatever passes for your blood all over _my_ laboratory. The experiment worked-you survived. Good job.”

From somewhere above, there was a brief, almost celebratory note. It felt...sarcastic.

\-----

The experiment had worked out even better than she had hoped. Not only had the robot survived the attempt at repair, but speech and cognition didn’t seem to have been impaired. ...Well, probably. She would need to do more testing to be sure. The thought filled her with a sense of cheer she hadn’t felt since the cooperative testing pair had found all those humans. A new form of testing, a new way to scratch the Itch.

Her subject didn’t seem as thrilled, but that was normal. To be expected, really. Subject cooperation and enthusiasm was always questionable, even on a good day.

“Let’s continue testing. Maybe you can impress me more now that you’re awake than your construction did. Is it normal, to look like you’ve been partially dismantled for scrap?”

That earned an angry scoffing noise in return, but there wasn’t much he could _do_ about it. He was still fairly firmly restrained, just in case he decided to go on a rampage as soon as he was loose. ...Not that he would get anywhere, being as far underground as they were, but it limited the amount of mess she had to clean up.

“You passed the auditory test, and the vocal. You have _no idea_ how glad I am you passed the vocal test. It’s much more interesting when testing subjects can give feedback.” GLaDOS moved in closer, her own optic flicking as she watched her subject’s track her in return. “...And visual. You’re really running on all cylinders today, aren’t you? Cylinders that I tore out and replaced, of course.”

“My systems are all functional,” he growled back, the ears moving forward in an aggressive sort of tilt. “You can cease your testing and let me go. I have no interest in your laboratory.”

The tilt of the ears reminded her of something she’d been wanting to see. A panel in the ceiling opened up, and a grabbing claw attached to a cable dropped down. GLaDOS experimentally  snapped the claw a few times, then grabbed hold of the largest ear on his left side. She had thought the components she had worked into them had to be at least somewhat sensitive, but she hadn’t expected being rewarded with a sharp, startled noise and an attempt at twisting away that made her test subject freeze.

A _very_ interesting case of stimulus-response.

\-----

Shockwave hadn’t really expected the easy, ‘let me go and I’ll be on my way’ approach to work, but it had been worth trying. Incidents that could be dealt with that didn’t involve heavy ordinance tended to be rare these days, but given how sore he felt, he’d been willing to test his luck. As silly as the concept of luck was.

Luck once again failed to be of any help, further cementing it as completely worthless.

And then his captor had grabbed onto one of his ears, and he had made the mistake of trying wrench his head away. The sensation was intense-pain mixed with a strange sense of pleasure. What had she mis-wired? Had she found sensors she could make sense of and decided to increase the sensitivity on a whim?

Why did she have to do it on a location that was so vulnerable?

He felt the grip on the ear loosen slightly and he tried to duck his head to slide the appendage free. It didn’t work; she grabbed hold tightly again and forcibly pulled it back. He barked out a noise despite himself again, and before he could get a proper protest out, there were more of the clawed cables dropping down, pulling all the smaller ears and taking hold of his right side as well. Shockwave felt his head being pulled back, and felt something twist in his internals as he vented heavily. It was _not_ the response he should’ve been having at the moment.

His captor, meanwhile, cocked her head to the side. “A very strong reaction to stimuli. But you know what the most important part of testing is, don’t you? Repeatable results.”

There was a brief moment of respite as she let go, although that made the feeling in his internals worse. It was a traitorous feeling of wanting the touch to continue, and unfortunately, it was rewarded as she seized his ears again. This time, she began toying with them, forcing them to move back and forth and pinching sharply with the claws. The sensation was just as intense as it had been the first time, with the added sharp edge from his internals. Another few nanokliks of freedom, and then his head was yanked up sharply as he tried to duck away. His captor had raised herself above him now, and the tug of the cables forced him to look up at her.

Shockwave was familiar enough with the expressions made by only one optic, even in a non-Cybertronian, to be able to tell she was exuding smug satisfaction. She tugged sharply again, and he had the distinct feeling that if he hadn’t been restrained, his knees would have buckled. Despite himself, a low whine escaped his vocal processor. It was a shamefully non-Decepticon thing to produce, that begging noise, but this was a unique form of torture.

“Oh,” she said, her tone just as satisfied as her expression, “You like that, don’t you?” 

He refused to give her a response. Giving her more ammunition at this point was unwise.

...Of course, if he was going over unwise actions, the first and very worst mistake he had made had, apparently, been not looking out for _scraps of organic fibers_. The ears tried to flick at the thought, only to be stopped by the cables, which tightened further.

“You know, I can see readouts from your systems,” she said, conversationally. “The ones I could make sense of, anyway. It seemed like a good idea while I was repairing things. So I could be sure if you were still trying to die or not. And right now, those systems are _very_ interesting.” Another cable dropped from the ceiling, curling up and snapping the claws at the end sharply. He was reminded of the drillers as he watched it snake and dart in front of him, the movement making it difficult to discern where the actual point of attack would be. Then it lunged forward, lifting a layer of plating up and tunneling in search of….

...ah. A connection port. If the feeling of having a stranger’s appendage rooting through his internals hadn’t been alarming enough, having it link to him certainly would have been. And it made the feeling that had been welling up inside worse; the linkage wasn’t _painful_ , but it did seem like a promise of something to come.

What that something was, he wasn’t entirely sure.

It didn’t take long for his captor to answer that question. She began playing with his ears again, alternating between sharp tugs and lighter prods and tweaks, and Shockwave felt the urge to make a noise again welling up in his vocal processor, venting heavily again. The toying with him was _frustrating_ ; that itch for more, for some kind of relief to feeling kept rising up, with no end in sight.

Until she began using the connection port to begin tweaking at his systems, at least. The first jolt he felt earned a sharp intake and a flick of his ears that was painful, given how tightly they were being held. But- “Yes. You found the correct system.”

Partly, it was to keep her from rooting further and disrupting something vital. And partly, it was because he found himself wanting her to do it again. It wasn’t a logical response, although he had to admit what _she_ was doing, from her side of things, was perfectly logical-if the situation had been reversed, he would’ve been just as eager to investigate a strange and obviously sentient robot. The fact that she was most curious about the systems that gave a pleasure response was something that was in his favor. She could’ve been interested in pain response, instead.

“Test subject feedback is normally disregarded during testing, due to its interrupting the scientific process.” She tilted her head to the side, her optic moving lazily up and down. “But in this case, will be taken into consideration for further study.”

Thankfully, she kept at it, and grew bolder-the tweaks became more powerful, beginning to threaten to overload that particular system. The attention focused on his ears became a counterpoint to it at first, and then she began to do both together, until-

...well, he was going to count himself lucky that she didn’t entirely short out the system and the rest around it. The feeling was intense, and while the act itself hadn’t been what a fellow Cybertronian would have done, the feeling and aftereffect were...similar. Shockwave vented heavily, sagging as much as he could against the restraints. His captor let go of his ears, and they sagged as well, gratefully. The relief was pleasant, and much-needed, but now he was exhausted from the overstimulation.

The cables withdrew, heading back into the ceiling, and she rose up higher, looking down him with a posture that looked thoughtful. “I think that’s enough testing for now. We’ll see about doing more data collection later.” Her optic flicked, looking him up and down again. “I need your name, for record keeping. Assuming whoever built you bothered to give you one.”

“Shockwave.” He was too tired at this point to bother with a lie.

“Shockwave,” she repeated. “Well, Shockwave. I think you and I have a lot of testing to explore together. For science.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, some notes on this first chapter here. On the voice thing: Shockwave took such a ridiculous amount of damage to his head and throat that I couldn’t resist going for a mythology gag here. The Transformers fans reading this may have already guessed: yes, he now sounds like [Corey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSt8_y4t96Q>) [Burton’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zLdd9mbfw8) take on him. Dude only got one line in English in the movie, and he sounded like my sink disposal there. I regret nothing. 
> 
> Stuff from the mandibles getting rewired up in his head to the ears (and the ears are another mythology gag; the film version might have horns, but ears/antlers/wiggly things are sort of a Shockwave thing, even in the prequel comics for DotM, and I really wanted to give him those back) and having a hell of a sensory feedback is actually very loosely inspired by the [cortical homunculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus). I’m sure my neurology professors would be very proud to learn this how I chose to apply what I learned in class. 
> 
> And bless 3H’s Transformers Universe for giving me a handy way to throw this plot together in the first place. How did Shockwave end up in the Portal ‘verse? Easy. Universe!Unicron started trying to grab people for that particular plotline again, and Shockwave got lost in the shuffle. Maybe Unicron got distracted by having somebody shoot out his optics again. Life is complicated when you’re a multiuniversal entity who’s attempting to eat everybody. 
> 
> Also, as noted in the beginning: this repair job and poking is in no way the worst thing to ever happen body-wise to Shockwave. What is? We’ll get to that.
> 
> And before moving onto the next chapter, please imagine Optimus Prime’s reaction to Shockwave just blooping out of existence post-’give me your face’ing at the start of things. It amuses the hell out of me.


	2. Trial Runs

He was restrained, exhausted, and sore. There was little to do  _ besides _ recharge. Shockwave decided to approach it as a respite from a very,  _ very _ trying day.

He wasn’t terribly surprised when he woke up in a new room, the restraints that had been holding him down gone. Shockwave got up carefully, his ears flicking back in annoyance as he found that he was less stable on his servos than he would’ve liked. It was understandable, given the circumstances, but he still hoped the feeling would fade quickly. He turned his attention to his surroundings, ears flicking back up. 

His surroundings were...dilapidated. At one point, it looked like everything had been white and simplistic, but now it was crumbling, with water dripping down and organic matter growing into everything. As he approached a wall, it lit up, displayed a series of pictographs. He peered at them for a moment-some sort of cube, water...it wasn’t particularly informative, but it was foolish to expect it to be. They were alien pictographs on an alien planet; he was lucky to understand anything at all. 

He walked a few steps further, and stopped as lights came on overhead, illuminating the rest of the room. There a door, currently shut, with a moat of some sort that blocked the direct path to it. On the wall next to the door, a orange oval glimmered,then had its center suddenly open, showing...the back of a Cybertronian? Shockwave half-turned, glancing over his shoulder, and confirmed that there was now a blue-rimmed oval, and that staring through it gave him a partial view of...himself. He turned back around again, studying his view through the orange portal.

His back seemed to have similar repair work to the front, with panels now overlaying the layers of armored plating, clashing badly with his original design. But he could at least see part of his head now, even if it was only the back. The horns on either side were gone, either a side effect of being shot repeatedly through the head or pared down to make room for the new ears. There was more paneling there, too. He had never wished so desperately for a mirror before.

But at the moment, there were more pressing matters than how he now looked. Shockwave turned his attention to the rest of the room. An overhead tube seemed to store some sort of cube, and there was a large, red button the floor some distance away. More directly in front of the tube itself was a tiny stand with a much smaller red button. He crouched down to eye it for a moment, then carefully reached out and tapped the button with a claw tip. The cube dropped from the ceiling tube, hitting the floor with a dull clunk. 

That was refreshingly simple, after what he had been through that day. He glanced to the new gun on his arm, eyeing it thoughtfully. The prongs weren’t flexible enough to be proper fingers, but they did seem to have some twitch to them. Could he pick up an object with them? 

The answer turned out to be yes, but not in the way he expected. As Shockwave reached out to the cube, experimentally trying to stretch out the prongs to their fullest, there was a slight shudder through the gun, and the cube was suddenly hoisted off the ground, hovering just in front of the gun. He drew his arm closer to himself, then stretched the arm to its full length. The cube followed the motions, remaining hovering. 

“Curious,” he said aloud, his ears flicking at the sound of his new voice. It would take getting used to, if he couldn’t devise a way to fix it himself. 

“Your cannon has been replaced with an Aperture Science handheld portal device. It was determined to be far less potentially destructive to the facility than a cannon, and much more conducive to testing.”

“You would be surprised at the usefulness of a cannon for scientific testing,” he replied, turning his arm this way and that to inspect the device further. The cube continued to follow his movements. “Particularly for motivating interns.”

There was a pause, and then his captor asked, “...You’ve participated in testing before?”

Shockwave rose back to his full height, looking around the room-he couldn’t see her, but he could hear her without any difficulty. She had to be remotely-aha. There was a camera, on the wall. He stepped closer to it. “I  _ created _ the tests. My primary function has always been science, even when I’ve been forced into...other duties.” All things considered, he preferred the science. It tended to be less of a headache than dealing with rebels on Cybertron, even taking interns into account.

Killing Autobots had been satisfying in its own way, occasionally educational, and he had been remarkably  _ good _ at it, but it had never been his main fixation until after he had been told of the AllSpark’s destruction. After that, a general desire to kill Autobots on principle had been replaced with a  _ drive _ .

“Then you may be fast-tracked to more advanced testing. Consider this a tutorial for your lab equipment. Your Aperture Science handheld portal device creates interdimensional gates that are completely safe. The device end, however is not. Do not touch the operational end of the device. Do not look directly into the operational end, or point it at the moon and fire.”

That gave him pause. “Was there an operational issue with the moon?”

"The last people involved a portal gun and moon connection experiment are currently orbiting it."

“...I see. It is a...logical warning.” His attention went back to the cube before him, and the rest of the room. So he had a test to complete. It seemed straightforward enough. He had a cube in-hand, and there was a cube-sized button on the floor. He walked over, and tried to twitch the prongs again, willing the cube to drop. It did, and across the moat, the door opened. Another basic step completed. His attention went to the closest portal, and he stuck the device through first, testing it. Nothing closed unexpectedly-it seemed safe enough, for the moment. He stepped through carefully, and found himself in front of the open door. 

“Excellent. Please pass through the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill. The loss of any important components is not part of the test, but may be an unintended side effect. If you suddenly lose any vital systems, please clearly state which systems, or failing that, flail in the direction of the missing components.” 

“You would have enjoyed our laboratory procedures on Cybertron,” he said as he moved through the grill, hoping that nothing was  _ unintentionally _ lost. “A surprising number of our lab practices were intended to weed out the less...hardy or intelligent interns.” Shockwave continued forward, moving into the elevator at the end of the short hall. From a distance, he had questioned its ability to carry him, but as he neared it, he could see it had clearly been intended for moving very large objects, rather than anything human-sized. The fit was still cramped, to a degree-but he was able to make himself fit. As the door shut behind him and the elevator began moving, he looked up again, his ears pricking up as he thought. “You have my name. What is yours? Or your title?” There had to be something besides ‘captor’.

There was a brief pause, then, “Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. GLaDOS.”

An acronym name was odd, but usable. He gave a short nod in response. “Noted.”

\------

This was going better than she could have hoped. Not only did her new subject take immediately to testing without complaint (or attempt to escape), apparently he  _ understood _ the importance of testing. It made her curious about the details-what had he been testing? Why? How did he manage to get interns, let alone threaten them with a cannon? If he had been created by humans, they apparently allowed their robots far more leeway in the name of testing. 

But for the moment, it looked like he had paused in his testing, after getting through two basic tests (how do lasers and discouragement redirection cubes work?) with ease. He was peering through the portals at...himself, apparently. The ears flicked up and down, and he leaned forward, then suddenly startled as he...blinked.

“Aside from the Aperture Science handheld portal device, all your newly installed components  _ should _ be able to work without any risk of bodily harm. Is there something wrong with your optic?”

He looked up at the ceiling, the eyelids narrowing the said optic a little. “Just because my optic was damaged when I arrived doesn’t make a blast shield necessary.”

“I’m sure you’ll adjust. You’ve already adapted to the portal device.” Granted, his being able to use it had also required some adaptation on her part-it had to create a portal big enough for him to pass through, and that also required complete overhauls of her testing chambers, scaling them to his height. It made her curious about how he might manage to get around the rest of facility.

Maybe a non-testing environment test was in order. It could be amusing, if slightly damaging to the infrastructure. And speaking of new challenges-

“This next test involves turrets. Seeing as how I  _ just _ repaired you, and your apparent talent for catching bullets with your face, caution is advised.”

“You’ve grossly overestimated how often I nearly die. But...noted.” His stance changed at that, bringing the portal device up as if it were a cannon again. Oh, this would be amusing.

Sure enough, when faced with a row of turrets, Shockwave stopped short. Directly in front of the turrets, but bullets clattering off of him didn’t seem to bother him too much. He stooped down, apparently trying to get a better look, and picked up a turret carefully between his clawtips. 

“Put me down!” The other turrets continued firing madly, in what was either an inspired display of attempting to defend their fellow turret, or proof of exactly how mindless they really were. 

“Oh,” Shockwave said, sounding intrigued. “You bothered giving drones speech?”

“It was to make the non-military model friendlier. Well, as friendly as anything literally filled to the brim with bullets can be.”

He glanced at the pile of spent bullets that was steadily growing around his feet. “Something appears to be wrong with their firing mechanisms. I should have  _ some _ damage, by this point.” Then he reached out with a foot, tapping a turret with a toe. It fell in a domino effect against the next turret, and the next, creating a heap of wiggling, useless robot limbs. 

“Help!”

“Ow ow owowow!”

“Uh oh,” said the held turret, summing up the situation for it and its kindred. It was set atop the pile, and Shockwave stepped over it, completing the test easily without the hindrance of several hundred bullets in his way. 

“Congratulations. You completed the test by ignoring or overcoming every obstacle in your way. And in the end, isn’t that what science is really about?”

“Arguably,” Shockwave replied, sounding almost amused as he stepped through the emancipation grid. “So far, my biggest obstacle has been your elevators.” Proving his point, he forced himself into the next one with no small amount of difficulty. “Everything on this planet is so  _ small _ .”

“All Aperture Science freight elevators are standardized and were not created with the needs of freakishly tall subjects in mind. On that note…” GLaDOS sent the elevator deeper into the bowels of the facility, rushing past the tube networks and long-broken panels and walkways. “This next test  _ also _ involves obstacles. Consider it a non-testing environment test. I need a disc to be retrieved; I’m sure you can find it.”

Shockwave unwedged himself from the elevator, stepping onto a rusty walkway that creaked alarmingly under his weight. She watched as his ears went up, then back, as he took in his surroundings-vines, tubing, and walkways everywhere, intertwining together and creating an environment that it would be impossible for him to walk through at his full height. She looked forward to him figuring  _ this _ test out.

And then there was a  _ noise _ and a flurry of metal parts. 

_ Oh. _

She had expected him to try an unorthodox approach, maybe-he  _ wasn’t _ a human, after all, with their sadly limited creativity-but this was a much, much more creative solution than she had expected.

\------

His transformation sequence still worked. That was an enormous relief. The concern had been nagging at him as he had gone through the tests-with all the repair work that had been done, would he still be able to transform? Had his t-cog been one of the parts destroyed?

Even with the modifications, everything still shifted and moved into place, nothing catching or grinding. He was just as mismatched looking in tank mode, he assumed, but how his altmode looked was of little concern. His former cannon, on the other hand… The portal device had taken its place, and he experimentally moved it around, testing its range of motion. It was as flexible as the former cannon had been, and a sharp grabbing motion at a nearby piece of debris confirmed that it could still pick things up in this mode as well. Satisfied, Shockwave rumbled forward. The walkway wasn’t really meant to hold a tank, just as it hadn’t been meant to support a mech of his size, but it at least allowed him to make his way through the clutter.

Now, finding a disc in this mess...that would be the challenging part. Shockwave rolled easily through the tangle, the portal device sweeping back and forth as he scanned for anything disc-like. Nothing there...or there...but  _ there _ was a stretch of blank white walls, and across a chasm, on a walkway that seemed to lead to a corridor, was another blank wall. The device had only worked on walls of that type so far; it almost seemed like an invitation to head that way. He fired off a set of portals, and rolled through. 

Once he had crossed through to the other side, he encountered another problem. He was able to turn-carefully-to face the corridor, but then found that he was too wide to fit through in his altmode. He briefly considered forcing his way through-he was reasonably sure he would be able to plow through the walls on either side with little effort-but that would make finding the disc difficult. 

Well. He ought to make sure he was able to transform back, anyway. Fortunately, just like the transition to altmode, the transformation back didn’t appear to have any problems-aside from his sensitive new ears being knocked into, briefly. Shockwave rubbed at the point that had been hit briefly, then stopped. The sensation was...distracting.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one whose mind wasn’t completely on testing at the moment. There was a quietly impressed noise from above, its sound seeming to echo slightly due to the size of the chamber. Then there was a pause, the sound of a vocal processor resetting, and- “When you’re finished, you’ll be heading to a well-lit test chamber to demonstrate that again. Multiple times, while I film it, because at the moment I can’t understand how you did that.  _ What _ company did you say you were from? Cybertron?”

She thought-he shook his head as he dropped onto his hand and knees to crawl through the corridor. It was undignified, but workable. “My home  _ planet _ is Cybertron. I was entrusted with watching over it by Megatron, until recently. I am a Cybertronian.” He paused for a moment to duck his head lower-the ears kept wanting to scrape the ceiling. “Although the popular terminology for my kind among humans seems to be ‘Transformer.’”

“No one ever said that humans are good at naming things. Or good at doing much, really.” 

“Shooting,” he replied, dryly. “They’re surprisingly effective at shooting. Ah-” He paused as he noticed the gleam of something shiny and disc-shaped in one of the rooms. “I believe I found your disc.” Getting to it took some contorting, but with enough shoving, he got close enough to seize it using the portal device. 

The next problem was getting back out. “I hope you aren’t particularly attached to your ceilings.” Dust and bits of ceiling rained down onto him, making his optic blink automatically in response-a reaction he was still getting used to. 

“If you didn’t destroy it, I’m sure the cooperative testing initiative would. Probably while dancing or something equally idiotic.” 

“I’m moving backwards on my knees through a corridor. There is already some level of idiocy at work here.” And speaking of-good, he was almost to the walkway. After transferring the disc to his hand-the last thing he wanted to do was drop it, after all that-firing portals to make it to the exit was easy enough. 

It  _ was _ a little disheartening when the disc dissolved in the emancipation grid, though. “...I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“The disc? It served its purpose. I was testing to see if you could retrieve it, not if it would survive the emancipation grid.” The elevator rose up to meet him, and Shockwave set about making himself fit again as GLaDOS continued. “Besides, I think sticking you in a room with a high speed camera and having you do your trick again will be  _ much _ more scientifically interesting than anything to do with a disc.” He became aware of something tugging at the end of an ear, and he paused as the sensation sent a jolt through his system. A cable had snaked down and grasped on his ear tips lightly in its claws. There was a shiver through his original plating as he managed to pull his ear free and fit inside the elevator. Around him, GLaDOS sounded smugly amused. “You are full of surprises, aren’t  you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figuring out how in the world Shockwave would get around Aperture was my big hurdle here. It was originally written with him having to squeeze himself into the regular elevators, but after playing the game some again-nope, way too small. 
> 
> Think of this as the tutorial portion of the fic-Shockwave gets to learn more about his weird new environment, and what in the world GLaDOS strapped onto his arm in place of his cannon.
> 
> (She still has the cannon, safely tucked away and ready to be reattached when he needs it.)


	3. Peer Review

So , he was an alien. An alien robot who seemed to switch between that and a tank with little thought, and who was involved in testing. GLaDOS had thought that her day was going well before, but this? This was  _ fantastic _ . Space, it seemed, was for more than just disposing of morons; it was also kind enough to create intelligent robots who aligned to her interests, and deposit them at her door.

“Stand in the center of the room, and the camera system will be able to see you from all angles,” she instructed as Shockwave strode in, shaking out his limbs slightly. The elevator system  _ was _ tight for him, and while it was technically a good  _ shape _ to allow him to enter as a tank, the dimensions were a different matter-at least as a robot, he could try and make himself smaller. It was a pity that making a proper elevator to his dimensions would involve reworking of the facility that wasn’t quite feasible, but at least she could bring walls, panels, and obstacles to him, instead.

Obediently, he made his way to the center of the room and stopped. Part of her wanted to have him come to her chamber so she could inspect him up close, but getting recordings of his transformation was important. It was unlike anything she’d seen, a smooth burst from robot to vehicle and back again.

And she knew robots bursting well. She’d certainly exploded Blue and Orange often enough to have a sense for how the process worked. 

He was looking around the room-all white testing walls, nothing to get in the way of filming-expectantly, and she took that as a cue that he was ready. “You may begin.”

There was that noise again, and a sudden burst of movement as metal shifted and twisted, faster she could follow. It would be fascinating to watch in slow motion later-the fact that nothing caught or landed out of place during such a quick sequence was remarkable. A thought occurred to her as she watched the tank now sitting in the room, the portal device lazily scanning from side to side. He hadn’t spoken while he was a tank before; she now wondered if he  _ could _ .

“If you’re looking for something to shoot at, I’d like to remind you that the Aperture Science handheld portal device should not be fired at anything you want to survive the experience. ...Which means that if whoever shot you shows up here, I  _ highly _ encourage you to use it on them. That’s the largest portal device ever designed. It would be very interesting to watch-for science, of course.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Ah, so he  _ could _ still speak. There was still no telling how he could see-sensors, perhaps? She might have to take a look-the idea of a turret without an obvious eye, with no clear way to tell which way it was aiming, was...intriguing. Then, without any warning, he transformed back to a robot. Which made her wonder-she could always compare video, of course, but talking to him would probably give more insight-

“Is the sequence always the same, or do you just rely on insane luck for everything to land in the right place?”

Back to tank, speaking  _ as _ he transformed, as if having a vocal processor flying around somewhere in there wasn’t a disruptive event. “The same. The sequence is very precise, and intended to be used on the move.” Then Shockwave shifted back to robot, and cocked his head thoughtfully, his ears perking up. “If you give me the room, I can show you flexible it is.”

“Keep in mind that if you drive through a wall into a bottomless chasm, I  _ may _ not be able to stop you. But your hurtling demise will be kept on hand so that others, with better brakes, can learn from it.” But she was already shifting panels around, growing the room-which was already larger than average, just to accommodate him-bigger still. The facility hadn’t been planned with  _ mobile _ giant robots in mind, but GLaDOS was glad that it was sprawling, anyway. It made things like this much easier. She dropped the last panel into place. “Go.”

Shockwave burst into movement, faster than she would expect something  _ that large _ to be. He started out at a sprint, and then transformed with that strange, distinctive noise, hitting the ground moving as a tank. The portal device on top of him swung around, aiming for the farthest wall, then swiveled to fire at a side wall. 

Well, he had a plan for how to avoid crashing through if he couldn’t brake in time, at least.

He kept rumbling along, moving at what looked like a good speed for a tank-he  _ was _ a tank, she wasn’t expecting any land speed records to be broken-and then suddenly was upright again, firing off a portal at the ceiling, rather than than keeping it on the side wall, and then just as fast, he was a tank again, rumbling through the far wall portal and then-well.

Then he dropped like a tank. He transformed as he fell, rolling and-letting out a sharp, pained noise. Someone apparently had had a plan that  _ almost _ worked but that failed to take into account the risks of sensitive new anatomy when it came to a dropping, rolling landing. It ruined the dramatic effect a little.

But just a little. The display gave her so many ideas-it opened up so many new possibilities for testing. Tests intended for one mode or the other, tests that required the reflexes to transform as swiftly as he had…

He was magnificent. And apparently in pain, at the moment, judging by the way he was tenderly trying to fix ear back into place, wincing as he got back to his feet. But mostly magnificent. And they hadn’t even properly  _ talked _ about science yet. 

\-----

Shockwave was aware that he was showing off, to a degree. It wasn’t normally the sort of thing he would do. But this was a rare case-the only case he could think of in his personal experience, really-where an alien being was fascinated not by a Cybertronian being an alien, or an intelligent machine, but by the act of transforming itself, and how it worked. Maybe being a fellow robotic life form was the key difference.

Whatever the root cause, the fact remained the same: GLaDOS showed a scientific interest, and he wished to...indulge her, to a degree. It was the most pleasant captivity he had ever been in; it could be seen as a sort of repayment. If he had been captured by Autobots, he would likely still be blinded, crippled, if not already dead. In comparison, this was almost...play. Play done for science, but play all the same. 

He was getting closer to the far wall, and an idea struck him-he hadn’t tried dropping from above yet using a portal, but it seemed like a workable idea. Yes-drive through, drop and transform, transform again. Another display of how adaptable the sequence was, no matter what sort of physical demands he was putting on himself. 

It...had almost worked. He had apparently been lucky before-none of the previous transformations put him in the position where he was at risk of landing on part of his head. The sensitive part, in this case. Shockwave barked out a wordless noise of pain as he rolled, cursing internally to himself. He could feel one of the ears drooping, and he tried to readjust it back into proper position, trying to ignore the jolts of pain coming it. It took a moment-and another burst of discomfort-but he managed to reset it, venting in relief. There. His dignity was damaged, but he didn’t need repairs again. 

“Was that an adequate demonstration?”

“I’ll need to review the film  _ really _ see how it all works. I might find something useful for panel readjustments.” She paused, then asked, “There’s no limit to how many times you can do that? The component wear-”

“Cybertronian shells are built to withstand it. We all transform; a body unable to has a serious defect. I can become  _ tired _ , but that won’t stop the function itself.”

“Built by who? You told me your planet’s name. But who built you?” He could pick up on the thread of curiosity in her tone. 

There were plenty of cameras to choose from to focus on, in lieu of her actual face. Shockwave walked to the closest one, addressing it directly. “The AllSpark came from the stars, and created our planet and our species. Who created the  _ AllSpark _ is a matter of debate.” He vented briefly-it was...odd, trying to find a way to explain the AllSpark to a robot who had not been created by it. “It also created energon- _ true _ energon, which we naturally feed off of, and which our young need to survive.” His ears flattened back at that train of thought. “But it was destroyed-no more of my kind will be built.”

Be built and  _ survive _ , at least. Starscream had tried, to his credit, but the Fallen’s plan had failed. Megatron had tried to keep more alive on Earth as well, and they had certainly tried again and again on Cybertron. Eventually, on Cybertron, at least, before he had been called to Earth, they had finally, quietly stopped trying to build. Insanity was, as the saying went, trying the exact same failure over and over again and expecting a different result. 

And he had nearly been yet another tally mark in their dwindling population just within the past day. The entire line of thought was sobering-not something he intended to focus in on when he had been asked to show off.

Nor was it something he was comfortable going into detail on for someone who still technically was his captor, even if she had been (mostly) benevolent so far. Shockwave reset his vocal processor, and forced his ears back to what he hoped was a neutral position. That, at least, was mildly gratifying-he could control them to some degree, if he focused. “Excuse me. To be more...scientific: we would create protoforms, and then allow them to gestate into larger, more independent forms over time. While it was not the most streamlined or efficient method, it worked, until the destruction of the AllSpark.”

The pause was awkward. Any discussion involving the looming death of his species, not at the hands of aliens or Unicron or even Omega Supreme simply having the bad day to end all bad days and deciding to tear every last Cybertronian limb from limb because he could, but because of Optimus Prime, foolish, _illogical_ _Optimus Prime-_

Shockwave considered emotion to be a weakness of sorts. It tended to lead to great, stupid acts and ideas that caused more-and far worse-fallout than careful, measured, logical action. Giving in to raw emotion was as good at crippling oneself midway through a battle. Others certainly assumed him to be emotionless, incapable of feeling anything than the desire to follow the most logical course of action, and he helped perpetuate that line of thought through the combination of controlling his reactions and his empurata. But at the moment, he was  _ angry _ .

He looked away from the camera. “I apologize. I believe I need to recharge properly; lack of it is affecting me.” He’d recharged after she’d first toyed with him, yes, but it hadn’t been for long or very restful. His self-repair routines needed to adapt to his alterations still. “Would this be the best location?”

“Better than some parts of the facility. You won’t wake up to mantis men crawling all over you, at least. I’ll give you some time.” With that, half the lights in the room shut off, while the other half remained lit-giving him some choice to which he preferred, he supposed. Shockwave transformed back to tank form, trying to will himself into a preferably dreamless recharge.

\-------

Well. She suddenly had some issues to deal with. GLaDOS brought up video of the transformation sequence, then slowed down so she could watch it carefully. It was brilliant engineering, everything fluidly bursting apart and coming back together, and none of it had been made by humans. None of it had been  _ restrained _ by humans. It was a pity that his species was endangered, but that was just more reason to keep hold of him. Keeping an endangered species away from things that could kill him? That was just good science. Ecology counted as a science.

But the fact that her newest test subject was rare and difficult (if not impossible) to replace was only one of her problems. A series of caws caught her attention, and GLaDOS angled her head up as RAM swooped in from above, something colorful in his beak. The crow landed on top of her head, ducking down to show off his prize in front of her optic-a blue bottle cap.

“Do you see that?” she asked Memory and Data, who were perched nearby. “RAM gets five science points for staying within the blue-orange color theming.” A cable descending from above, the claws on the end opening slightly. RAM passed the bottle cap to the claws, then took flight again, moving to join his siblings. GLaDOS, meanwhile, used the claw to deposit the bottle cap on a shelf she had created in her chamber. Bottle caps, bits of turret, feathers-what might look like bits of garbage to idiot human eyes was, she knew, actually a shelf full of gifts. She made sure to rate each gift she received, and let them know where they stood in the overall rankings. A healthy sense of competition was important.

GLaDOS eyed the shelf of gifts thoughtfully. The biggest problem was still weighing on her mind-keeping her latest test subject alive for the long term. She couldn’t provide his natural fuel-apparently the  _ universe _ couldn’t provide his natural fuel, because his species had either terrible luck or had, at some point early on with fuel choices, made the worst choice possible. But he didn’t say he would necessarily  _ starve _ without it, which was the one bright spot here. If she couldn’t offer energon, maybe she could offer a substitute.

Maybe she could offer many, many substitutes. It was a test, in a way-’what can the alien robot ingest and survive off of?’, with the completion of the test coming when he declared something edible, or at least largely non-fatal to ingest. ...however he ingested. His optic had been hanging through his throat when she had found him, and that made it difficult to tell what the mouth (or lack therefore of) situation was. 

She turned some of her attention outwards, picking through the facility, going through records to see what still lay moldering in storage. Fuels, they could try that. Plant matter, that could be broken down, possibly. Bits of to-be-redeemed turret? Maybe he could be the synthetic version of a carnivore, gnashing small robots to pieces. If that was the case, she had a bin or two of cores she had yet to incinerate that she would happily sacrifice. She watched the sequence a few more times in slow motion, catching nuances here and there-so  _ that _ was how that rotated and snapped into that position, look how that folded in just such a way to keep from breaking, no matter how fast the moment was-and musing over her new find. 

She needed new approaches to testing for him. The typical lethal testing hazards, turrets and toxic waste, were effective enough against Blue and Orange, but they didn’t seem as hazardous when your test subject was thirty-five feet tall and could turn into a tank. Besides, she wanted to keep him alive. He was endangered, and while she could get some information out of his pieces, should he finally finish what he started when he had arrived and die on her, but letting him stay alive and talking was more educational.

GLaDOS couldn’t remember the last time a subject had addressed her like someone on equal terms, rather than screaming, or shoving hands over their ears and huddling up into a ball, or yelling or never saying  _ anything _ , just silently charging onwards with a determination that would be admirable if it had been solely focused on completing tests and not on escape-

-It was  _ rare _ to be spoken to like a person. Rare and intriguing. 

She turned her attention back to the testing chamber where she had left him. He was in the darkened portion, currently in tank form, and she assumed was in the middle of the recharging he’d asked for. The only thing that moved was the portal device on top, twitching occasionally. GLaDOS watched with mild interest; no Aperture construct slept in the proper sense. She couldn’t help but wonder if recharging was closer to human sleeping, or something different entirely. As she watched, the portal device rotated, and suddenly fired off a shot at the wall, but he didn’t turn to drive towards it, or even seem to notice that it had happened. 

...Dreaming, probably. Well. If he was dreaming of testing, she would be more than happy to indulge him when he woke up.

\-------

Shockwave awoke from strange, disjointed dreams. Dreaming about being an intern again, about Cybertron, mashing together with more recent issues-he blamed everything that had happened in...he assumed it had been a day.

It occurred to him that he actually had no idea how long it had been since Optimus Prime had almost killed him. There were other questions, as well-he still had no idea how he had gotten to the facility, or where it was. The whole experience had been so disorienting that he still felt like he was sorting himself out, in some respects. He transformed and looked around the room-still no exit door, for the moment. That meant he would be in it until she noticed he was awake. 

Shockwave opted to use the opportunity to investigate himself while he could. He had seen some of himself early on, thanks to the portal device, but he still hadn’t gotten much of an opportunity to see his own (new) face yet. He wanted to; the experience of blinking made him wonder exactly how much she had changed. So he readjusted the portal positions and peered in.

The answer was...quite a lot. He could see the shape of the ears now, long dark struts that twitched and flared as he observed himself. Perhaps that was where a lot of the wiring for his mandibles had gone to; the feeling of flaring out the ears wasn’t dissimilar to flaring his mandibles. His optic was still red, but the surrounding color of the metal was wrong, all white metal. Better than dead grey, but it added to his currently mismatched look. The optic, though...the optic was interesting. His previous optic had had a degree of expression, but nothing like this. The optic lens was set deep, inside a series of rings, and it  _ moved  _ as he watched himself, following the flick of his ears, looking down to glance at his claws. He could even change its size, widening it and contracting it from a bright red flare to a small, near-white dot. The panels-lids only added to the expressiveness, opening wide and narrowing as he tried out expressions.

He could  _ make  _ expressions. 

Apparently, humans didn’t feel the need to give their single-opticed constructs as little ability to express themselves as possible. This was the only point in their favor he could give them, at the moment. It was refreshingly different from the Cybertronian take on those with one optic. It did possibly affect his ability to not betray his thoughts through expression, though-he had spent so long without the ability to emote that he couldn’t help but wonder how much he had been giving away without thinking about it.

All the more reason to let logic rule, rather than emotion. 

“I’m not sure what your beauty standards are. But I  _ did _ use the least broken, scorched, and irradiated spare parts I could find, which easily puts you ahead of most of the cores, looks-wise. So you have that going for you.”

Shockwave looked up at the sound GLaDOS’ voice from above, and wondered how long she had been observing him. Not that he could fault her-were their positions reversed, he would have been taking the opportunity to quietly watch and take notes, as well.  “The differences will take adjusting to, but they are functional.” 

“Good,” GLaDOS said as walls began to be pulling away, shuffling and moving, and an exit appeared. Shockwave headed through it, finding the pathway longer and more winding than before, and was pleasantly surprised to find a much larger elevator waiting for him. “Here, I found this while trying to find a better way to ferry you around.  It’s entertaining to watch you try to shove yourself into the elevators you’ve been using, but it’s easier if you’re not losing parts with each test chamber. This is ancient-they used some  _ very _ large machinery to build the facility-but it should still work.”

The oversized freight elevator rumbled to life, moving along its track and taking him past parts of the facility he hadn’t seen yet. There was still organic growth scattered here and there, but it became more and more rare as more tubes and metal struts appeared, crowding out the plant life. The elevator passed through a manufacturing section, more tubes, and-

“Smelting pits. Brutal, yet effective.”

“That would be the turret redemption line. You would be amazed how frequently turrets need redeeming.” 

“That is a euphemism I will remember.” 

The freight elevator ground to a halt a few cycles later, stopping in front of another exit. He stepped through, expecting another testing chamber, and paused. This wasn’t the room he had woken up in when he had first come to, but she was suspended above him again, looking down at him with a calculating optic. Whereas the room he had first been held in was all bright, clinical white, this was dark, with curved panels rising from floor to ceiling. The overall sense was one of having entered a throne room. For a nano-klik, Shockwave found himself wondering if he was expected to kneel. He decided to just nod in greeting, for now. “I had expected more tests.”

“Oh, I’m working on them. You’ve given me a unique challenge; all the testing chambers I’ve designed were meant for humans, and I’ve only got one turret large enough to be an actual hazard.” She swung forward, head tilting as she leaned in to get a better look. “But right now, I wanted to get more information from you, and that’s easier when you’re not distracted by trying to avoid falling into acid. So,” she said, her optic widening just a little, enough that he could pick up on the edge of eagerness, “Let’s talk about you.” 

\------

So he began to explain. He was Shockwave, a scientist by original function and preference, who had risen up to become caretaker of Cybertron as the war scattered off their dying planet and into the stars beyond. He explained the factions, the ruthlessly logical expansionist approach of the Decepticons versus the soft, short-sighted, and ultimately species-damning Autobot approach. As he talked, she would interject with questions-explain that, tell me more about this, why, why was this so important after so many  _ thousands _ of years had passed? 

“And I thought humans had a talent for killing each other off in record numbers, and yet yours manages to keep one war going for thousands of years. It’s impressive.”

“With the current rate of the war, it will end within a vorn, most likely far less.” He paused. “On that note...how did you find me? I was in the city of Chicago, and I regained consciousness here. I’m not even sure how far away Chicago  _ is _ from here.”

“I don’t check the monitors constantly,” GLaDOS said, a shrug of sorts running through her body as she flexed. “I looked out and there you were, bleeding over everything. So I brought you into the facility. Chicago is hundreds of miles away, assuming it’s still standing.”

He made a thoughtful noise to himself-that still did little to explain how he  _ arrived _ , but having been left for dead or scrap still seemed like the most logical answer. 

“You’ve been here for almost two days,” she said, breaking the brief silence. “And in my experience, test subject performance suffers after a certain point if I don't feed them. Some sooner than others. Are you hungry?”

It was a question that surprised him, to a degree-his mind had been on so many other things that hunger had been pushed to the side, ignored as a sort of background noise. But it was a reminder that he hadn’t-with the flurry of activity, there had been little time to eat, even though he had been hungry. “Yes,” he admitted, glancing towards where he  _ hoped _ his conversion tank still was. If she had had to reposition it during her other repairs, it could get...complicated. 

Panels began to move and shift again, bringing up new panels that were laden with various objects. Plants, bits of metal, the occasional raw chunk of ore-it seemed that without any information to go on besides ‘potentially edible’, GLaDOS had collected as wide a variety of materials as possible. It was the sort of thing that would have taken some effort, and his ears gave a pleased little flick as he began prying under one of his new panels. It should be-ah, yes. His conversion tank was still in the correct place, perhaps a little worse for wear but still functional. He began feeding material into it, and he noticed GLaDOS watching in interest as it began processing. “There’s another step,” he explained, pulling a siphon out of his arm. Siphons were long since standard at this point-in a war where people had horrific damage done to their faces with alarming regularity, having a backup method to feed by was common sense. He was glad for it now. 

Because she seemed so interested in how it worked, Shockwave opted to demonstrate, pulling out the siphon to its full length and showing her the end. “My siphon,” he explained, then attached it to the tank, his ears drooping a bit in relief at the sensation of feeding again. He hadn’t realized how hungry he had been. “A standard way to feed, and less messy than trying to empty the tank into something else.” 

Her body language seemed pleased with the fact that he had sampled from everything offered. “So I can add ‘eats everything’ to my notes in your file. That certainly makes things easier than it could be.”

“We’ve become very good scavengers, out of necessity.” He tapped his tank lightly with a claw. “Perhaps the most useful project I worked on.” 

The mention of projects made that eager edge return. “So you did more than just testing?”

“Testing, observation, a few cloning experiments, construction and  _ re _ construction after the first attempt at a project blew up...my experiments kept me busy, when I was allowed them.” He tucked away the siphon and replaced the panel on his torso. “The conversion tanks were the last project before I had to focus entirely on dealing with attacks by the remaining Autobots on Cybertron. Frankly, I preferred the experiments  At least until more recent events made killing Autobots more...pressing.” 

Revenge in response to betraying one’s own species to save a planet of pitifully short-lived organics was completely logical. 

“Well, you’ve come to the right place for science. I’m going to be testing for a very,  _ very _ long time.” A cable’s claw brushed lightly against an ear tip. When had  _ those _ dropped down, and gotten so near his ears? 

“Yes,” he said, glancing from side to side as he noticed that more of the cables had descended and wondering how much his newfound ability to emote was giving away, “I had gathered that.”

\-------

GLaDOS normally prided herself on being the one to know everything in Aperture. The solutions to the tests? All known. How to keep the entire facility running, even after decades of overgrowth had begun trying to interfere in various areas? Practically the equivalent of muscle memory; she didn’t even have to think as she worked. But the moment? She was  _ learning _ . 

An entire species of technologically-advanced transforming robots, waging war on each other across the universe. Of course, they’d decided to kill each other rather than do anything intelligent, but the  _ possibilities _ , if they had stopped trying to blow each other’s heads off and applied it to something that really mattered, to science instead-

And here she was, having found one that was a scientist. One who, from what he’d told her so far, seemed to completely understand the need, when struck with an idea, to look science in the eye and beat it half to death when science said ‘you can’t do that.’ She was going to do so much science with him, and at the moment,  _ to _ him. 

Lazily, she coiled cables loosely around his ears-he had responded well to that before. It was a known way of getting a result. The rest of him, though-she had done her best while repairing him, and apparently it was enough to keep him alive, but she needed more information. She wanted to know how he worked. When you had an endangered species running around a facility full of turrets, acid pits, malfunctioning doors, and an entire colony of mantis men, repairs were the sort of thing that it was wise to plan for. 

If he had more interesting reactions during it, that was just a bonus. 

“Your history lesson was a good start, but I can’t make repairs with history. Let’s move on to anatomy.” The upside of the better part of his torso having been blown open was that it meant she hadn’t had to go through much. Stop the loss of fluids, rearrange everything that came loose, patch and solder the parts that looked like they went together, and put paneling over the whole mess to keep it contained. Paneling was much easier to quickly and easily remove than the bone-like chest parts she’d had to pry off. Another clawed cable dropped down, prying at the release to his chest paneling. His optic darted between his chest and his ears, and his hand rose slightly, fingers twitching as if he were waiting for a chance to ask a question. She let the chest panel drop to the floor with a clang before acknowledging it. “Yes?”

“If we-” his ears twitched, and she tightened the currently slack grip just a little to test if the response still worked, which it did, judging the sudden jolt that he tried to hide, poorly- “-are covering anatomy, it might be a better idea if I sit down, first.” 

That made sense-she had lost more than one test subject to the surprisingly dangerous act of falling over. While it was technically  _ good _ to know that Aperture’s floors had a phenomenal success rate at causing cranial trauma, she’d rather he stay conscious for this. GLaDOS watched as Shockwave sat down-carefully, minding the cables that were wound across his ears. “You’re going to have to walk me through getting the rest of your torso open. I know it moves, from your transformation, but I don’t know how to force it. Short of bringing in a blowtorch, which  _ is _ an option.” 

“Generally, we don’t force them open. Either a medic or someone with an axe does it.” But as she watched, there was a mechanical noise as part of the torso began to pull back, exposing his internals. It was far better put together than a human’s, and less messy by several factors. Fuel lines pulsed, systems flickered, and there was a refreshing lack of screaming and wet noises. 

Shockwave inclined his head slightly, then seemed to regret the motion, judging by the twitch as the movement tugged at an ear. “Where would you like to begin?” 

GLaDOS brought the clawed cable closer again, lightly tapping the tip of a claw at the junction of neck and chest. “Let’s take it from the top.” She could feel the venting out of hot air out of his systems in response; it almost felt like a laugh cut off before it could get out.

“In most mechanisms, the esophageal tube and an additional respiratory vent run up the neck from the torso, and terminate in the mouth. I am an...exception,” he said, and there was a brief but noticeable droop to his ears. That was interesting, and she filed it away as something to dig into more later. For now, she just wanted the broad overview. She stroked the drooping ears with the claw tips of the cables, shaking him out of whatever line of thought had made them drop. Shockwave blinked, his optic contracting and flicking back and forth like a startled core. He made a throat-clearing noise, and continued, gesturing the upper systems. “The ventilation system. Highly important for dealing with regulating internal temperatures, especially when various systems are brought online in battle.” He gestured lower, towards a cylindrical object that was still marked from his recent brush with death-the conversion tank. “The conversion tank, as you saw before. The actual fuel tank is located behind it, and in my case, is fed fuel from attached to the siphon in my arm. In a standard configuration, the esophageal tube would run directly to it.”

There was another object nestled below the major systems he had shown before, tightly wedged in a snaking mass of fuel lines and support struts. “This looks armored. What’s inside?” She began to pick at the edge of the object, able to see the lines where the two sides came together. What was  _ really _ interesting was how he froze as soon as she began. “Is something wrong?”

He reached up to carefully move the clawed cable away, still over his torso but lower, away from the object. “That is my spark casing. It is perhaps the most vital component of any Cybertronian; if it takes damage, I  _ will _ die.” 

Well, that took one system off the list of things to potentially tweak. “And that would cut all of this short. I’ll leave it alone for now.” There were other parts to investigate, besides. GLaDOS brought her head closer to peer at another oddly-shaped object in his torso. “You have some surprisingly sharp parts next to your fuel lines.”

“That would be the t-cog-the transformation cog. The torso is built to allow enough clearance, even as parts shift during the sequence.” He gestured upwards from the object with his hand. “You can see where the line from my fuel pump runs behind it, but stays back far enough to avoid catching.” She watched as he adjusted his position to get a better look at his own innards, his ears trying to jerk forward as he apparently thought of something-then was immediately distracted by the tug of her cables. Apparently, for a moment, he’d forgotten that he was still restrained.

It took some effort to not laugh at the resulting reaction-he shivered hard enough that there was an audible rattle in his internals. “Having some problems?”

“Thinking of more to cover,” he said, doing his best to recover smoothly-and doing a better job of it than she expected. A science point for keeping the lecture going in the face of distraction. He gestured at multiple points, pointing them out in turn. “Major connection ports, largely for transmitting touch-based feedback from the outer plating.” He paused, his optic flicking to side-eye her. “...As you found out, they can be...overloaded.”

“And with something besides pain; that’s a first.” GLaDOS doubted that the scientists had thought past including anything  _ besides _ a pain response, on a physical level. The solution euphoria was a pleasure response, but she had yet to experience anything similar, physically. Pain got the results they had wanted, sometimes. If there was anything else, it was likely-like most Aperture results-incidental to the original goal, a happy or at least useful accident. She certainly hadn’t had any way to test for it. “For an armored robot, you seem to be surprisingly…” She prodded lightly at the port with the tip of a claw, just to watch him jolt a little. “...Sensitive.”

“Internal ports like this generally aren’t exposed, and some components have been...misaligned.” He reached up to brush his hand over an ear, but stopped himself halfway through the gesture. Shockwave side-eyed her again, giving her a distinctly  _ tired _ look. “I’m ninety percent sure the better part of my mouth is now waving around outside my head, and it’s taking some adjustment. And  _ that _ is ignoring the fact that the sensitivity tuning is likely off.”

“I worked with what was still intact and what I could piece together. Next time, have fewer giant holes through your body, and I won’t have to improvise as much.” GLaDOS dropped a few more cables from the ceiling, coiling around his torso with the claws pointed at what she  _ now _ knew were some key points. “Now, hold still.”

His ears attempted to shoot up in alarm, which was possibly one of the worst things he could do at the moment. She had been gradually tightening the the cables winding around them, just waiting for the right moment. “What are you-ahh!” 

There was one thing GLaDOS had to give to core faces: they made fantastic expressions when startled. They got even better when one added the additional stimuli of the multiple ports he had so kindly pointed out. His optic widened as he realized she had directed the cables at the sensitive ports, then rolled back and shuttered with a snap. She could see the inner rings of the optic’s setting through the gap as the optic rolled, and she was briefly reminded of the little moron’s response to the Itch being satisfied-a thought she quickly shoved aside. His ears offered a welcome distraction from the thought, trying to twitch madly in her grasp and seeming to cause a feedback loop, particularly when she adjusted her hold.There was an interestingly strangled noise from Shockwave, a heavy series of huffing vents, and a solid clunk as half a ton of metal suddenly slumped backwards from a sitting position. 

GLaDOS withdrew the cables, rising up and reangling herself so she could hang directly over him. It took a few moments, but eventually, the lids of his optic cracked open, revealing a pinpoint dot that focused in on her. He vented again, slowly.

“You know, I thought Optimus Prime was going to be the death of me. In fact, I was fairly certain of it a few cycles ago. But now I think you’ve forced him out of the running, and put yourself there, instead.”

GLaDOS just chuckled, bringing a cable down to brush an ear gently. “Oh, Shockwave. I’ve been the death of a  _ lot _ of people.”

He shut his optic. “Somehow, I’m not  surprised.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So let’s talk about Shockwave and emotions. Traditionally, Shockwave is described as emotionless and logical. It’s a thing that keeps coming up-in IDW’s comics, it’s the result of Senate’s nasty handiwork, but in other takes, it’s just kinda how he _is_. In the DotM prequel comic Rising Storm, Megatron even makes mention of it as he talks about how Shockwave got to Earth. Shockwave himself, in his various incarnations, is certainly focused on logic above emotion.
> 
> But here’s the thing: for a guy who’s supposed to be so cold, emotionless, and logical, he sure seems to have a hell of a lot of feelings. Just looking at the DotM on its own, we have a dude who doesn’t start shooting until they attack his pet when he first shows up, and when his pet is killed later in the film, he gets so pissed off that [even the soundtrack notices](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR4vuyU-GWw). Dragging G1 and Animated into things, you get a whole lot of triumphant Shockwave, pissed Shockwave, alarmed Shockwave, _highly offended_ Shockwave (please go find the “Liar! Lying liar!” clip in the TFA link, it’s funny as hell), Shockwave pointing and laughing at someone else’s misfortune (also in the same link)...and then there’s the Marvel G1 comics, where early in there’s an arc that I can only sum up as ‘Shockwave has baby rabies.’ Where he tells Optimus Prime _multiple_ times about how it’s only logical he should feel proud and happy about helping create the next generation of Decepticons.
> 
> I am not making this up. I’ll provide photos of the panels upon request.
> 
> The point is, Shockwave across the board seems to have a lot of feelings, but does a damn good job of putting forward the ‘all logic, no emotion’ facade. Which makes for interesting writing once you have a chance to write things from his point of view.


	4. Critically Endangered

He could leave any time he wished. Shockwave was well aware of that fact; even with his original cannon replaced with a portal device, he was still more than capable of rampaging through the facility if he had truly felt the need. All the cables and turrets GLaDOS had at her disposal wouldn’t be much of an issue, now that he had been repaired.

Instead, he stayed. They had settled into something of a routine, spending most of the day running through GLaDOS’ testing courses, and then he would go explore the rest of the facility. According to her, having free rein to wander was a reward for being the only test subject who not only willingly tested, but also had a perfect, explosion-free track record.

It raised some questions about the track record _with_ explosions.

Wandering the facility was educational, learning its layout and its hazard. This section was too broken down and weak to travel through, this part could likely be repaired once debris had been cleared, this section had strange artwork scrawled across the broken down panels, half-hidden by overgrowth…

It was fascinating, in its alien way. And it was a distraction from thinking too much about his dilemma, namely: where he _should_ have been. It had been several days, and he was completely repaired, functional, and able to fight. Arguably, he should have immediately headed for the surface as soon as he was able, and tried to regroup with his fellow Decepticons.

That was the problem, though. The attack on Chicago, a desperate attempt to save Cybertron itself, had begun as planned, and should have been a war-ending victory for the Decepticons.  The plan, much like the Driller, had been destroyed by Optimus Prime on a brutal rampage through their forces, turning Decepticon plans and defenses alike into a chaotic mess.  From what he could remember seeing (before the screaming shock of a hand around his optic cable, before the crunch of having his one remaining optic ripped out through the ruin of his jaws and the jagged remains of his throat) before losing consciousness, the Decepticons had most likely lost the battle.

And then there was what he knew of the aftermath; he had apparently been found on the surface, dumped like scrap. This told him one of two things: either the Decepticons had tried to drag him off with them and been forced to abandon him, or the Autobots and humans had decided he wasn’t worth interrogation _or_ vivisection and had opted to dispose of him. The logical conclusion, in either case, was that the Decepticons had lost the battle for Chicago, and been killed or driven off. GLaDOS hadn’t mentioned spotting any new planets suddenly encroaching on Earth’s atmosphere, either, and so it seemed that the space bridge had _also_ failed. Given their previous losses, whatever remained of the army would likely be unable to mount a counterattack anytime soon, if at all. If anything was waiting for him on the surface still, it was likely human or Autobot, heavily armed, and intent on finishing what it had started.

In comparison, the Aperture facility was secure- _very_ secure, going by GLaDOS’ description, and Shockwave was very familiar with how well subterranean hiding work. And even if he was, technically speaking, a captive still, GLaDOS was far preferable to Autobots or humans. Namely, she seemed to be very keen on keeping him _alive_.

Logic dictated that staying hidden was the wiser option. The initial, burning desire to kill that had struck him once Megatron had reawakened him in Siberia and that had only intensified once he had learned what the Autobots had done more recently had faded dramatically. His rage had been spent, exhausted by too many losses in too short a period of time, and besides being the logical choice, hiding felt _preferable_ , if he was honest about the emotional component he did his best to ignore. Still, he felt the need to _know_. Even if he could only get a brief message out, alerting the remaining Decepticons that he was staying hidden until more time had passed since the last disaster, it would at least be a confirmation that he wasn’t the only one left standing. Considering Optimus’ bloodlust in battle, it was a legitimate concern. Even the Decepticons elsewhere in the world were likely dead or in hiding; the Autobots had proven adept at working with humans to hunt Decepticons down, and after Chicago, they were even less likely to bother with prisoners.

Shockwave made his way towards one of the freight elevators, finally tired of his internal debate. If he went up to the surface and could get no response, that would be that. If he _could_ get a response...well, he would work from there. He paid little mind to his surroundings, aside from ducking an occasional low-hanging pipe-his mind was entirely on the surface at the moment. Having a little voice pipe up to the side was a surprise, and enough to make him halt, his ears flicking up.

“I’m different.”

Shockwave looked around, trying to place the source of the voice. It sounded...distinctly turret-like. GLaDOS had stopped including them in the tests because of their complete ineffectiveness; they had certainly _tried_ , but none had done any actual damage. Which made the fact that his ankles weren’t currently being peppered with harmless gunfire a little surprising. It took a moment, but he finally spotted the bit of white perched amongst the bits of rusting machinery. Who knew how it had ended up in that spot.

Even though it didn’t have its laser sight on, Shockwave had the distinct feeling that the turret was peering directly at him. “Persephone was brought beneath the earth to be the consort of Hades. She can go to the surface, but always returns underground.”

That was...strange. Shockwave had no idea what had prompted the turret’s chatter, or what had made it focus on the underground versus the surface. It was all unnervingly illogical, and the best idea at the moment seemed to be to ignore it.

He was _not_ going be unnerved by a strange little turret. Shockwave’s ears pinned back as he marched on, heading for the freight elevator again. The heavy clunking of the elevator as he entered it and it began to move were a reassuring counterpoint to the strange turret-the elevator, at least, was working exactly as it was supposed to.

...Up until it ground to a halt, at least. Suddenly, GLaDOS’ voice was overhead, sounding mildly perturbed. “Where are _you_ going?”

“I need to test if my internal radio is still functional. If any of my allies are alive, I need to let them know that I cannot join them.” The elevator remained stopped. “I won’t be long. The more time I spend on the surface, the more likely I am to be spotted.” There was a pause, and then the elevator shuddered back to life, moving upwards again. It was a slow process, but eventually, Shockwave felt the elevator slow again, finally halting inside what looked to be a large building.

This was a minor problem, easily solved by going through a wall. It tore easily as Shockwave shouldered it, the metal making screeching noises that were unpleasantly reminiscent of the sounds his own frame had made as it had been torn apart.

And then it was silent, save for the soft rustle of the wind blowing through the plant life. Aside from the rusted hulk of the building he had just gone through, nothing was around him but blue, cloudless sky and waving golden grass. Shockwave looked around, feeling his ears automatically perk up as he looked and listened for...anything.

Nothing. No sounds of humans coming to investigate the racket he had just made. No sounds of passing vehicles. Any local wildlife was quiet, likely frightened by his presence. All around him, absolutely nothing.

It meant that there would be nothing to muffle any radio communications, at least. “Shockwave to any surviving Decepticon forces.” Nothing. Nothing, not even the slightest hint of a connection. “This is Decepticon Shockwave, attempting-”

Nothing.

He tried adjusting his radio’s settings, scanning for anything- a hint of frequency that might get a result, something that might open some line of communication. Nothing. Nothing. No-

He paused, ears flicking again as he stopped his search. Had he just heard-he adjusted the radio again, trying to coax the signal-then suddenly getting a blast of sound-

_“-ue sky please tell us why you had to hide away for so long-”_

Shockwave shuttered his optic, feeling his ears droop as the sudden burst of hope was just as quickly smashed back down to nothing. Music, _human_ music. He turned the radio off, venting out a sigh. No response, not even a recording left behind to tell any survivors to flee the planet and regroup elsewhere.

Nothing. That confirmed it: he was most likely alone here. If any Decepticons did remain, he had no way to communicate with them.

Shockwave cast one last look around at the too-bright sky and fields and headed back towards the ruined building. There was nothing for him up here.

\------

They were _dancing_ again.

“Yes, Blue, I see you. No, I still don’t approve. Orange, I thought you were more intelligent than that. _Marginally_ more intelligent.”

Why they insisted on it, she didn’t know. They knew she didn’t like it, they knew that some days it was a quick route to being blown up and reassembled again, and still they did it. It was baffling. She was about to perform a corrective explosion when she noticed that a freight elevator elsewhere in the facility was descending. _There_ he was. It had taken less time than she had expected, at least. Not that she had really doubted he would return; he had proved himself to be her most agreeable and competent test subject, and there was science to do still. Lots of science, seeing how she was still working out how to best design a challenging course for a Cybertronian.

“I’ll be back,” she told the two little robots, who at this point seemed to be engaged in a heated dance-off. “Try to not do anything more stupid than what you’re currently doing.” Maybe they would dance their way into acid and learn something in the process.

GLaDOS turned her attention to the descending freight elevator. She was curious to hear the results of Shockwave’s test; if something _was_ still broken inside him, she wanted to know, so they could begin to replicate the correct parts. It wouldn’t be as fast as having oversized versions of existing designs made, as she had done for his initial repairs, but it was certainly doable.

She watched as he made his way off the freight elevator, and immediately noticed the shift in posture. She couldn’t claim to know his body language _well_ , not yet, but she had gotten an idea of his usual patterns, watching him as he spoke, tested, and explored, to see that it had changed. There was a slump to him, ears drooping, shoulders lacking their usual set. And if that didn’t communicate distress clearly enough, she certainly had practice reading core expressions-and that was a particularly unhappy core face, the upper lid mostly shuttered, the pupil focused down towards the floor. He didn’t say anything as he stepped off the elevator, the only sound the heavy thud of his footsteps against the floor.

“I’m going to guess it didn’t go _well_ ,” she finally said, breaking the silence.

That seemed to startle him, and Shockwave looked up, optic flicking around as he focused on the ceiling. “I am alone. My radio is functional, but there was no response. In a best case scenario, the rest of the Decepticons are too far to be in contact range.”

From his tone and posture, it was obvious enough that he thought the best case scenario was unlikely. That was usually how it went with best case scenarios. “How far is the range?”

“A base had been set up on Mars to serve as an additional operations point. The distance from Earth to Mars did not cause any communication difficulties-if they are out of range, they are _very_ far out of range.”

And that was impressive-her own communication and surveillance abilities didn’t extend anywhere as far. There were parts of Aperture she was blind to, cut off by the damage of time and the elements, or simply because they hadn’t given her sensors that far down. “Tactical silence, maybe. Trying to avoid having the humans pinpoint their location, and avoiding a repeat of Chicago. In space.”

There was the faintest hint of a twitch to his ears-a little bit of hope was what he had needed, apparently, even with how unused to giving it she was. Reminding someone of the likelihood of their miserable failure was something she was far more accustomed to. ...And speaking of miserable failure…

“That reminds me. They aren’t _your_ species, but I do have some robots I’d like you to meet. Get back on the freight elevator and I’ll take you to see them.”

Shockwave paused for a moment, considering the idea, then gave a small nod and turned to head back to the elevator. GLaDOS was quietly pleased; the distraction would most likely do him good. And she was _very_ curious to see the reaction he got.

\-------

“They’re _terrified_.”

“They’re marshmallows,” GLaDOS said, mildly. “I’ve tried making them into kill machines, and you know what I got? Marshmallows with delusions of grandeur.” She paused, then added, “...it lead to them dealing with a bird problem successfully, but I think that should be counted as a statistical anomaly. Not relevant to overall data whatsoever.”

Shockwave settled down onto one knee to get a better look at the two much smaller robots that were currently quaking at the sight of him. They kept scrambling around, trying to shove their partner to the forefront so that _they_ would be the one to face him. Currently, the lanky, orange-opticed one was winning at that, shoving the blue one so hard that it was having to backpedal wildly just to stay in mostly the same spot. They were bickering, as far as he could tell, the orange higher pitched, the blue lower, chattering away rapidfire and the blue flailing its arms around wildly as if it was helping to prove a point.

He glanced up to the ceiling, flicking his ears a bit as loud clangs joined the noise of the squabbling-apparently, ‘stop hitting yourself’ as a method of argument resolution transcended species. “Do they speak any intelligible languages? Or is their language downloadable?”

“Some days I’m not even sure it’s a real language, instead of a series of screams as they come up with new and exciting ways to accidentally destroy each other. You’d have to ask _them_ ; I don’t keep a record of it.”

Shockwave turned his attention back to the pair, watching as Blue finally got the upper hand again and chucked Orange bodily in his direction. The lanky robot flew like groundpounder warframe-poorly, a mere few feet off the ground-and landed in a tangle of limbs that slid and hit his foot. He leaned down to look at the smaller robot more closely, watching as its optic contracted tightly in fear, and reset his vocalizer. “Bah weep grana weep ninibong.”

There was a pause as the two smaller robots stared at him like he was insane. He even had the vague feeling that GLaDOS’ expression was probably similar back in her chamber, going off of the heavy silence that followed the greeting.

“What was that?” GLaDOS finally asked, after a nanoklik that felt like an eternity.

“The universal greeting. The intent is to sound harmless.” Apparently, it had worked to a degree; confusion seemed to have replaced stark terror, and Blue was sidling closer now, having a heated, chirruping conversation with Orange. “I am Shockwave,” he said, gesturing at himself with the portal device. He’d noticed that the robots were both carrying much smaller versions of the device; maybe the similarity would help. At the moment, Orange was holding its device to its chest closely, as if to guard it against him; Blue, meanwhile, was holding its up like a shield. Given how round the robot was and how small the device was in comparison, it seemed...ineffective.

Both of them eyed him for a moment, glanced at each other, then looked back to him. Blue stood and drew itself up to its full height, gesturing towards its round torso-it seemed to _only_ be torso, really, with limbs welded on-with a twirling flail of its arm. Orange took a moment to regain its footing, scrambling for a few seconds with its limbs going in every direction before righting itself and wiggling the fingers of its hand in a small, shy wave.

Apparently, the universal greeting had done its job, by making him sound so ridiculous that he was no longer a threat. Shockwave considered the pair for a moment, his ears twitching as he thought. “What are their names? Their genders?” It was difficult to guess that sort of thing with organic species; with non-Cybertronians, Shockwave had long since learned to just ask.

“Blue and Orange, for obvious reasons. ...Blue is pitched lower and Orange is pitched higher, but frankly, I don’t think they really understand gender in other people, let alone themselves. That requires more of a thought process than what they’ve got. They’re very single-minded about testing.” GLaDOS paused, then added, “And dancing. Unfortunately.”

“Dancing?” Blue seemed to take that as a cue, making a pleased-sounding burble and starting to  sway back and forth.

“Oh no, you’ve set them off. Blue, Orange!” GLaDOS’ sharper tone didn’t appear to have any effect on the two smaller robots; Blue had gotten Orange to join in, and they were now dancing around his feet. Meanwhile, around them, panels had begun to shift, and parts were being brought in to reconstruct the chamber around them. “If you’re going to show off, you’re going to show off _testing_.”

That got their attention, and Shockwave watched as both perked up as the room finished shifting around them. At a flatly stated ‘go’ from GLaDOS, they went, charging forward to solve the new test that was in place.

Five nanokliks later, Shockwave was dodging a chunk of Blue that went sailing over his head and nearly grazed his ears. “That was more lethal than I had expected.”

“They’ll be fine,” GLaDOS replied, sounding unconcerned about the smoking bits of robot scattered across the room. “The reassembly machine probably needed the workout today, anyway.” The door behind Shockwave slid open, and Blue, looking completely unharmed-and unfazed by its recent demise-ran past him to rejoin Orange in the test. “See? Good as new. As dumb as ever, but good as new.”

As he watched the pair resume their testing, Shockwave decided could appreciate the stubborn tenacity on display. It was a complete refusal to give up in the face of something highly dangerous, no matter how many times limbs went flying.

It was a very _Decepticon_ approach.

\-------

He had watched Blue and Orange test for some time, and then had run through a few tests himself-GLaDOS was getting a better feel of what posed a challenge for him, what could actually make him have to stop and plan versus barreling through an obstacle in his altmode. Shockwave enjoyed the increasing difficulty; it gave him something to think about that _wasn’t_ depressing. But eventually, he reached the point where recharge was necessary, and had to retire. Then, it was only him and his thoughts.

He understood that GLaDOS’ suggestion of tactical silence was meant to be a comfort, and it was-if he didn’t stop and think about it. He was high in the Decepticon chain of command; while radio silence might not be broken for most members of the army, the former guardian of Cybertron was another matter entirely.

Especially when both Soundwave and Starscream were now dead. That left himself and Megatron as the highest ranking Decepticons, with Sentinel Prime as an uneasy ally-while he may have schemed with the Decepticons, he was still an _Autobot_ , and that was enough to make Shockwave wary. Refusing to respond to his call was so unlikely that the only logical explanation was that he was completely alone on Earth, either left for dead or the only one left alive.

The fact that he _was_ alive was amazing. Alive, functional, and arguably in a better state physically than he had been in before the battle for Chicago, if one ignored the fact that he looked mismatched now. He squinted at his portal device as he laid down to rest, still finding himself marveling a little at the fact that he could _make_ a proper squint now, an actual expression rather than just the slight contraction or widening of an optic. GLaDOS had done him a great kindness just by repairing him and saving his life. He doubted she realized how much of an additional kindness she had done by replacing the ruin of his face with something so expressive.

Shockwave huffed out a vent of mild annoyance at himself for the maudlin train of thought. It was a kindness, yes, but he was better off not reminiscing on his face, or lack thereof. He had other issues to dwell on; it was _illogical_. Closing his optic, trying to not think again about the fact that he was able to close it, he attempted to recharge.

\------

He was dreaming. She was fairly certain of that, anyway. Since he had begun recharging in robot mode more and more, it had gotten more noticable. It was certainly a more interesting form to watch him in as he slept; there were more moving parts at work versus his tank mode, more twitching and flicking as he reacted to something in his sleep.

GLaDOS wasn’t envious of sleep or dreaming-she was built to run the entire facility, and having to stop and shut herself down would get in the way of that. Things went far smoother-and were much less likely to _explode_ -when she was able to watch the facility’s various systems at all times. Sleep, in comparison, was highly inefficient and got in the way of perfectly good testing time. But watching Shockwave sleep as she went through her usual rounds of checking the various cameras did make her wonder what the experience was like, out of simple scientific curiosity.

Maybe she’d have him fill out a questionnaire after he woke up.

Normally, she would have moved on after a brief glance-the facility was huge, and there were a _lot_ of cameras to cycle through. But she stayed to watch, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully. This was a much more _active_ dream than usual. Normally the twitches and flicks would be in brief bursts, with longer periods of stillness. Sometimes he might turn over. But _outbursts_ , like his initial portal device firing, were rare.

This time, though, his reaction was more extreme. What had started with just twitching parts had moved onto thrashing, as if he was trying to fight with something. The portal device fired randomly, but the sound didn’t wake him-whatever he was dreaming about currently had his full attention. After about a minute of more thrashing and clawing madly the floor, Shockwave suddenly sat upright, and she could hear him huffing out short, sharp ventilations. As she watched, he reached up and rubbed at his face with his hand, pausing after a moment, as if he was remembering something.

She watched until he laid back down and settled back into sleep. The questionnaire, she decided, could wait for another time.

\-----

It had been a long time since he had last had a nightmare, particularly one centered on empurata. He had had a single optic for most of his life, by this point, and he had adapted to it. A nightmare like _that_ was likely a sign that he had spent entirely too much time thinking about his near-brush with death, and the resulting repairs.

Right now, most of his thoughts were on how groggy he still was. But his conversion tank needed filling again, and conversation with GLaDOS would likely distract him from thinking too much about nightmares. Stepping into her chamber felt like a relief.

She looked up, turning away from where she had been looking at the floor. The bird that was sitting there cawed at him, then snatched up a bit of shiny metal in its beak and took flight, flapping up to roost higher in the chamber. He watched as her optic shifted in its setting, moving up and down. For a moment, he expected a ‘you look terrible’-but instead, he was a greeted with a nod and “There’s food on platform to the right.”

“Thank you.” Either he was getting better at keeping the ears from expressing things, or she had decided to not comment. He prefered the former option. The sight of the materials for his conversion tank was a welcome one, though, and he headed towards it eagerly. As he sat and began feeding the material in, he turned his attention back to GLaDOS. “What are your testing plans today?”

“I have some ideas for testing that would require transforming,” she said as she picked up an additional shiny bit of metal from the floor with a clawed cable, the movements precise and delicate. As she placed the metal piece on a panel alongside other miscellaneous bits, she added, “But I was hoping for more of a history lesson, first. I’ve had the factions explained, and the ancient history, but aside from you mentioning Chicago, you haven’t told me anything more _recent_. I’m curious about what I missed while doing science.”

“Our history on Earth, then. Honestly, many parts of it are-” he paused, feeling his ears automatically pin back. “Embarrassing, in hindsight. We made a great many tactical errors. The first on Earth was Megatron choosing to chase the AllSpark on his own. He crash-landed in the Arctic, and was...frozen, for several thousand years.”

Granted, he could understand the urge to chase it down even at risk to oneself, if it had been as close as Megatron had described. Shockwave still remembered the initial ‘the Autobots shot _what_ into space?’ conversation with Starscream, and how faint of a hope ever finding it again had seemed. With that in mind, taking a great risk when it was so painfully close was understandable.

But that didn’t make the entire issue of crashing and being frozen for thousands of years less embarrassing. Particularly taking into account…

“I made much the same error, later on. The humans found Megatron and excavated him, still frozen. They also found the AllSpark, eventually, and that was when I was alerted to its location. It _called_ me, and I knew what I had to do. I left Cybertron to hunt it down, and…” He paused, then vented a sigh as he focused very intently on continuing to fill his conversion tank, rather than making optic contact. “...I proceeded to crash as well, and entered stasis lock.”

“You’re _kidding_ .” She sounded impressed, but not in the _good_ way. It was the distinct tones of the ‘how are you still alive, you idiot?’ sort of impressed.

“It kept me from reuniting with the rest of the Decepticons for some time,” he continued, still choosing to keep his focus on his conversion tank. There, that looked like enough for a decent amount of fuel. “So what occured after _I_ crashed, I only know secondhand. Humans found me as well, although being in stasis lock, there was nothing I could do about it-I was healing and unable to react to anything. Apparently, the humans used both Megatron and I to reverse-engineer technology, although Megatron was unfortunate enough to be aware yet restrained during the entire process-”

“Wait,” GLaDOS interrupted, leaning forward and looking intensely interested as her optic’s setting shifted. “What _kind_ of technology?”

“Almost everything, apparently. Vehicles, communication devices-all the devices we mimicked to hide ourselves amongst them were of Cybertronian origin.”

GLaDOS drew herself up higher, tilting her head as if thinking-or more likely, given the pause, as if she were reviewing documents. “No, that’s impossible,” she said after a moment, shaking her head. “Aperture would have known about it. Either through consulting or espionage, they would have _known_. And there’s not a single record of giant alien robots anywhere in here, and the facility has always kept meticulous records.”

If anyone would know that for a fact, it would be her. But- “Are you sure?”

“Positive. Aperture kept tabs on the competition from the start, _and_ was used frequently for government consulting. If someone had decided to reverse engineer something from space, Aperture scientists would have been some of the first people called.” Her optic’s setting shifted and clacked as she thought for a moment, then asked, “What else happened?”

“Starscream and other Decepticon forces made their way to Earth, and did _not_ crash. Unfortunately, the Autobots arrived as well. Megatron was eventually freed, which led to our pursuing the AllSpark again-but that failed when the AllSpark was forced into Megatron’s chest, destroying it and Megatron both.”

She gave him another _look_. “This seems like the sort of thing that would make humans talk. What year was this?”

Shockwave paused, having to convert the date from Cybertronian to the local human equivalent. “2007.”

“2007? You’re sure?”

He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but he had a feeling that it wouldn’t lead to any _good_ revelations. “I am positive.”

“Well, that doesn’t work _at all_ .” Even the click of her optic’s setting sounded annoyed. “The timeline doesn’t match. Your brawl should have gotten the attention of the Combine. From what information I’ve gotten about them, they probably would’ve been trying to kill _all_ of you. And they were more advanced than the humans.”

“There were only humans. There was never any sign of other non-native species, even after several years of battle in the local time. What are the Combine?”

That got a slight chuckle out of her. “Dead and gone. They _were_ an alien empire who briefly took over, but they underestimated human stubbornness. ...and insanity,” she added, sounding thoughtful.

“I am _well aware_ of the dangers of that.” He had suffered because of it. If he hadn’t been blinded by the humans’ attack, things may have gone differently in Chicago. But that was in the past, and couldn’t be changed. Besides, there were more important things to consider, given what she had just told him. “...What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking of some recordings I found while going through my files. A cost-saving proposal before all management and chamber construction shifted to _me_.” She sounded smug about that. “The plan was to access a multiverse, infinite possible universes, all different from this one. And then get the alternate Apertures to build new chambers, and then steal them back.”

Shockwave stared. It felt like an expression with more of an effect now, given that other expressions were now possible in general. “That is the most limited possible use of other universes I’ve heard. ...and this was a topic that was argued about when I was an intern; I’ve heard _many_ bad ideas.”

“Aperture Science has always been _very_ devoted to its testing program and pushing its limits, even at the edge of bankruptcy. But what’s _important_ here is, I think you’re from one of them. ...One where Aperture Scientists are very, very frustrated that they never got see an alien robot until they started fighting the street.”

An alternate universe. It _would_ explain the discrepancies neatly, why nothing in their timeline matched. But- “How did they plan to travel back and forth between universes?”

GLaDOS moved in a full body shrug, her posture unconcerned. “Apparently they had someone named Greg working on it-he never got around to working on the exact details. Greg was...redirected to other testing-related studies after I took over.”

“And I have no idea how I could have triggered it. I wasn’t in any _state_ to trigger anything.” Unless bleeding profusely counted as a trigger. ...if it did, they should have had the dying popping out of his own universe left and right. He rubbed at the side of his head, shuttering his optic. “This is going to give me a headache.”

“I don’t think that the _how_ matters that much. It’s all academic-theoretically fascinating, but not much practical use. I could find the research-if you can read English-but even I’m not sure how we’d test them.”

“I’ll look over the research, once you find it. It prove useful, somehow.”

GLaDOS nodded at that. “I’ll collect it for you, then. Now, as far as _useful_ science, I have some new ideas about having to use your alt mode to complete a test…”

\------

Alternate universes. As he had told GLaDOS, the concept wasn’t unfamiliar, but it was still strange to step back and consider, once he thought about the larger picture. If this wasn’t the same universe, could there still be Autobots and Decepticons, somewhere out in the cosmos, still hunting down the AllSpark? Perhaps there might not even _be_ factions; in an alternate universe, war could have never happened. Or war could have started, and just have quickly ended due to overwhelming force on either side.

Of course, equally likely was that this could be a universe where the Cybertronian species never existed. That was the problem with a multiverse-the options were infinite. At any rate, it did little to change his situation. He was still the only Decepticon here, and one of desperately few in his home universe. The thought continued to weigh heavily on him, even as he wished it didn’t. There was something about the idea of quite possibly being the _last_ of something that nagged at the mind.

But that was yet another case of emotion interfering. He had work to do. Shockwave turned his attention to the keyboard-human glyphs, rather than Cybertronian, but he could read them, at least, and GLaDOS had gotten her reassembly machine to create an enlarged version suitable for his hand. It was certainly easier than trying to peck at miniature keys with a clawed fingertip and hoping he didn’t accidentally spear the entire thing. When connected to one of the walls that could display images, it made a functional system for writing. And he had a great deal of writing to do.

If he was the last-of his faction, of his species-he didn’t intend for his knowledge to die with him. He had worked too long and too hard to let years of study and experimentation be lost to Optimus Prime’s forced extinction. Even if he was unsure if he could recreate any of his projects from Cybertron on Earth, if he catalogued his knowledge, there was the possibility that someone in the future could make use of it (GLaDOS, most likely) someday, somehow.

And that was just the scientific aspect of things. There was more to catalogue; Cybertronian physiology, history, language-while he might not be in the correct universe, he could at least try to ensure that _some_ universe remembered their species, and remembered more than just a handful of disastrous battles. They were so much _more_ than that, and he was well aware that he would only be scratching the surface in many areas. He needed a historian, an orator, a medic, more fellow scientists-

He needed the Decepticons.

He could try to summarize Megatron’s speeches, the overall points, but he couldn’t imitate _Megatron_ , the fire behind the words. He understood politicking, but couldn’t discuss the truly fine points of political machinations like Starscream, the born manipulator, could. Soundwave likely had more recordings of events and conversations that would have been of historical interest than anyone would ever know; all lost now. They and an entire faction’s worth of knowledge, history, experience, almost as if it had never existed in the first place.

Shockwave shut his optic for a moment. There it was again, emotion trying make its way in where it was not wanted or needed. There were many things to regret losing, but if he was to catalogue what he could, he needed focus, and emotion weakened that focus. Better to stay with the logic of the situation: if records remained, at least some part of the Cybertronian species would live on.

Also logical: cataloging everything in the facility, because it was fascinating enough to deserve it. Shockwave was no stranger to ‘mad’ science-the phrase had certainly been slung in his direction before-but the humans who had created Aperture seemed to take it to new heights. Frequently poorly thought out, dangerous heights, but new heights nevertheless. GLaDOS in particular was a marvel-built by humans, and yet just as sentient and intelligent as he was, a person, rather than a tool. Based on what he had seen of humans before landing at her doorstep, he would’ve never expected them to be capable of such a thing.

Judging by what she’d told him regarding the neurotoxin incident, it seemed that the humans hadn’t fully understood what they had created, either. He had no plans to underestimate her, himself. Her control of the entire facility was worth studying in itself-reminiscent of cityformers, and she seemed so much more hands-on in the function of everything. Documenting how she interacted with the facility and how its component parts all worked together would be another major project, but it wasn’t as if he was lacking for time now. There were no Autobots to hunt down and kill for their complicity in what they had done; there were no other Decepticons to rally.

Shockwave found himself wondering if perhaps she would provide information on her own schematics, if not a walkthrough like he had done. While some of her workings were visible, mainly around her head, the majority was hidden away by paneling. He was curious to compare systems and structures-and, if he were being completely honest with himself, there was a level of prurient interest there, as well. She had toyed with his systems, and certainly understood how to best get a reaction out of him, but he was still unsure what, if anything, she took from such encounters, aside from amusement. Some form of reciprocation seemed like it would be an obvious thing to bring up, and yet she never did. ...Perhaps reciprocation wasn’t possible. She had been built by humans, after all, and he wasn’t sure if they would have considered such things. A sad prospect, but now that he thought about it, not an unlikely one.

...Perhaps if that was the case, the issue could be fixed. It was something to mull over.

\------

Finding Greg’s complete notes had turned out to be slightly more of a challenge than she had expected. The Perpetual Testing Initiative was an idea that predated her, and so all the records were old, buried in the mass of digitized paperwork that had been filed away and forgotten. GLaDOS was still doubtful of how useful they would be; even if they furthered Aperture’s ventures into making physics slightly break itself and somehow got a portal going _back_ to his home universe, there was little point in using it. Everyone Shockwave counted as a colleague  there was dead or might as well be, and being dead tended to get in the way of doing much of anything.

She was very, very aware of how much being dead got in the way of things. At least Shockwave was a much more reasonable test subject-happy to test, clever, incredibly resilient, and perhaps most importantly, he hadn’t tried to murder her _once._ He was everything she could ask for in a test subject, really.

Still, she _did_ like testing humans. While she had gone through an alarming number of her new collection in an attempt to create a new subject that could test like _her_ , the population wasn’t close to be depleted yet, despite what she had told Blue and Orange.

(It had been meant to make them feel more important, that they were her last, best hope. In a way, they had been-she couldn’t have trusted a _human_ to help her take down her feathered, facility-destroying adversary. Judging by their success against the bird, the tactic had worked well. And it wasn’t as if they had any contact with the humans she was still testing-as far as they knew, she had been completely, one hundred percent truthful.)

GLaDOS selected a human from cryogenic stasis, humming to herself as she worked. It was always interesting, seeing the reaction when a new subject was introduced to testing. Maybe this time she would list off some statistics, let them know about the bar that Shockwave’s testing had set. Humans always _did_ seem to hate being compared unfavorably to machines, even if it was to be expected. It could result in a more spirited attempt at testing than usual. While she waited for the cryogenic thawing process to finish, she went through cameras elsewhere in the facility. Parts were being constructed, defective turrets were being redeemed, Blue and Orange were bickering about something, their limbs flailing wildly as they argued some point that only made sense to them-ah, there was Shockwave, typing away at his oversized keyboard. She _knew_ what he was writing-it was going into her systems, it was impossible for her _not_ to-but still, she spoke up. “What are you recording today?”

He stopped, ears going up as he looked towards the room’s camera. “At the moment, notes on the construction of facility, and how your control of it functions.” Shockwave paused, looking back towards the screen and scrolling through his work. “It’s becoming a very _long_ file.”

 _That_ was interesting. “A file for who?” As far as people who might read it, there was just the two of them. Blue and Orange weren’t bright enough to show any interest in that sort of information-and it was probably better if they didn’t know it, anyway-and frozen humans were in no shape to read. Besides, once they were thawed, they had better, testing-related things to do.

The question seemed to give him pause, and he faltered a bit, his ears flickering up and down in a way that seemed to scream uncertainty. He reset his vocal processor, keeping his attention on the screen. “...I can’t be sure, to be honest,” he finally admitted. “I’ve been cataloging my own species’ history for the last few megacycles. The facility, and you, seemed worth adding to it.” Shockwave paused again, then glanced to the camera briefly, before looking back to the screen. “My kind may not die _easily_ , but we do die. Should anything happen to me, I would like a record of the Cybertronian species to remain.”

...well, that could explain why he’d slept horribly. Too focused on death for his own good, but then again, he was dealing with _lots_ of deaths that mattered, while she had only dealt with her own, which she had recovered from just fine. It was a very different set of circumstances.

“Grim, but educational. _Not_ that I expected anyone but you or I to review it-this facility won’t be rusting away anytime soon.” It might need some vines and dirt cleared away here and there, but the facility was solid, so long as a moron wasn’t in control of any areas. “I can put together a test, if you’d like a distraction. All science, no death. ...Well, maybe some turret deaths, but they don’t really count.”

Shockwave shook his head, looking to the camera again. “I wanted to ask you a few questions, actually. Structural questions, in a way.” His optic was darting around in its setting like he was trying to think quickly, back and forth as he wrestled with the phrasing of _something_ . “Part of the cataloging is comparative, and covers how Cybertronian components and yours can interact-both in the repairwork you’ve done, and your ability to overload my systems. But I have no data to enter regarding how Cybertronian parts interact from _your_ end. Assuming anything reciprocal is possible, of course. You hadn’t brought it up previously, and so it remains…” There went his optic again, apparently hoping to see words appear out of thin air. “...An unknown.”

...It was flattering, really. No one had tried to flatter her before. But here he was, uncertain about his word choice and yet trying very hard to phrase a wish to overload her system right _back_ in language that would fit a scientific report. The effort was commendable. And, frankly, surprising. He was attractive for obvious reasons-he was a beautifully engineered marvel of robot construction, with the added benefit of being a scientist. Meanwhile, she wasn’t sure what passed for beauty standards among his species, but she would’ve been willing to bet that ‘the same species’ and ‘not bolted to the ceiling’ were some basic tenets that were fairly universal.

(She had no such species baggage. She was one of a kind; there _were_ no others for her to look at appreciatively or, alternatively, stick a paper bag over the heads of.)

But apparently, those potential issues weren’t much of a block to his interest. And there was another fact that made his line of questioning...intriguing. She actually wasn’t _sure_ if reciprocation, as he’d delicately phrased it, was a option. It was an issue that had never come up before.

“You can’t finish your report without data. Come up the Central AI Chamber and I’ll fill in the gaps.”

It was an issue that was worth investigating. For science.

\-------

Well. That had gone...better than expected, particularly given that he’d been composing his wording on the spur of the moment. It had just seemed like the best time to bring up the... _curiosity_. An unknown was going to become a known; that was something to be pleased about, if looking at it from the purely scientific perspective, even if reciprocation turned out to not be an option.

He was hoping that that wasn’t the case.

The freight elevator’s journey gave him a few more cycles to organize his thoughts, at least. What _did_ he know about her construction? She was immobile, attached to the ceiling, so any repositioning for better access to any components that did get a response would fall to him. She had plating, but it was minimal and smooth compared to his own-but that lack of plating did mean easy access to all of her components. The large, squarish block behind her head was likely of no use, but behind it were wires, snaking along her arms-or what were arms at one point, perhaps, but were now immobile, in any case-and connecting to deeper in the torso. Her head and face were quite possibly his best bet, however-they had the highest concentration of small, delicate parts that looked like they could be sensitive.

The elevator shuddered to a halt and jolted him out of his reflections. She was waiting. Shockwave strode out of the elevator, drawing himself up and feeling the ears perk up along with the movement. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure he could draw a reaction out of her, he wanted to look confident as he entered the chamber. This was a scientific problem to solve; he had a talent for those. His ears moved in a flick as he stepped through and saw her-his inability to control the shifts of his ears and optic hopefully wouldn’t send any unintended signals. He was out of practice when it came to controlling expressions.

But speaking of expressions-she was watching him, her optic’s setting pushing forward and adjusting up and down in a sweep that he’d learned she tended to do while thinking. Even with only one optic and a face that was very blank by Cybertronian standards, she kept surprising him with how expressive her face could be. The setting would shift, the round casing surrounding the optic would adjust, the optic itself would brighten-and all of that, working together, was a clear illustrator of her mood. It was a marked difference from fixed, unchanging optic associated with empurata, even if that was likely what most Cybertrons would want to compare it to.

It was a normal face, by the standards of her surroundings, and at the moment, there was a distinctly _anticipatory_ expression to its thoughtfulness.

“So,” she said, twisting her head to try and examine her own body, “It’s my turn to give the anatomy lesson. I’ll show what to avoid, first.”

Reasonable, and good to know. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally disconnect something vital and have to scramble to fix it. He nodded slightly. “Please do.”

“The main issue is the connective cables,” she said, gesturing upwards with her head towards the various black and orange cables that ran upwards to connect to the rings in the ceiling. “The larger ones support my weight. Don’t try to do anything that would disconnect them, unless you _want_ me to fall on you, and probably break your face all over again.” She looked back to him. “And be careful around my optic casing. It _can_ come out, and once it does, nothing good will happen. ‘A nuclear industrial accident may happen’ kind of nothing good, which might even slow _you_ down.”

Fortunately, prodding her directly in the optic hadn’t been in his plans. “Understood.” Then he reached out to touch her, focusing on her head first and trying to be mindful of his clawed fingertips. Her construction certainly looked solid, but there was crazing covering all of the white panel pieces. He half wondered if touching them might cause parts to flake off like damaged paint, but the glaze held, and he couldn’t feel any deeper cracks below the fine lines of the crazing. Good.

He already knew she lacked an energy signature-everything around the facility did-but it was still slightly odd to not pick up on anything when he was so close. She was warm, though-he could feel the heat that her internal components generated, even with so much exposed to the air. Shockwave stroked gently along the curve of her faceplate, following it to the top of her head. There were two bands there, spaced some distance apart, and he was reminded of his own ears. He hadn’t really compared the pieces before, but now he could see the similarities, how his seemed to be modified and much larger versions. That gave him an idea-they might not be as sensitive as his own ears, but it was something to try. He carefully petted at the closer band, following it as it attached to the metal work of her head. There were nooks and crannies where the individual pieces came together, layering on top of one another, and he followed the lines of those as well. She made a soft chuckle and he felt his ears flick in response-good. Even if they ended up getting nowhere, he’d at least have the partial satisfaction of knowing she seemed to enjoy his attempts.

He continued to move down, running his hand along the hydraulic cylinders framing the central connection piece of her neck and feeling them shift under the touch. She had turned her head to watch him as he moved-and once again, he found himself impressed with her engineering. Her design was simplistic compared to a Cybertronian one, cut down to a minimal number of parts, but she was just as flexible and capable of body language as he was-especially impressive, given the fact that she was permanently attached to the ceiling. Her design was distinctly alien, and yet attractive. There was no need for the extraneous in her design.

Shockwave paused as he made his way to her chest-there was a large opening there, circular and exposing what looked to be a connection point on the framework beneath her chest paneling. The hole looked too neat to be old damage, but there was nothing obvious connecting to it. He examined it for a moment, then ran his hand across the gap and onto the paneling.

“Oh,” he heard her say, and paused, holding back from moving any further.

“An area to avoid?” he asked, preparing to move his hand away from the spot.

“No,” she said, trying to turn her head to look. Given the configuration of her neck, the attempt wasn’t entirely successful. “No, that was interesting.” Her optic’s setting shifted, moving up and down as she looked herself over. “That’s one of my core connection ports-the others are that box behind my neck, and where you can see the red lighting, on either side. I’m getting feedback when you touch it.”

“Core connections?” He placed his hand over the chest port carefully, and then reached with his portal device towards the box behind her neck. It wasn’t a proper hand, but if his hypothesis was correct, it might have the same effect.

“The scientists created the cores to try and keep me in check. Normally I’m _very happy_ with nothing connecting to them, but that feeling is new. ...I can feel it on that box behind my neck, too.”

“My energy signature,” he said, quietly pleased that his guess seemed to be right. “All Cybertronians have one, and they are all unique. The feedback isn’t unpleasant?”

GLaDOS shifted her position, stretching her body out further. “No. You aren’t trying to invade my head and fill it with distracting nonsense; you’re just...there.” From her tone, just being _there_ wasn’t a bad thing at all. “Try touching both the ports with the lights at once. As long as you don’t hook the portal device’s claws onto any nearby cables, you should be fine.”

He obliged, straightening and placing both hand and device onto the requested spots. Shockwave tried to feel for any sort of energy signature from her and failed; it clearly wasn’t part of her design. But she still _felt_ alive, warm and shifting slightly in response to the touch. He ran both appendages over the ports, his hand better able to feel the slight variations between the components making up each port.

“Yes,” she said, sounding decidedly pleased. “Keep doing that. I think we may be on the edge of a scientific breakthrough.” He realized she had opted to rest the curve of her chin on his shoulder, close enough to touch his ears, and his optic flicked to the side to watch her as she very deliberately leaned against them.

She had _excellent_ focus, while he had been terribly distracted in his similar situation. He had to admire that. Shockwave turned his attention back to the connection ports, determined to figure out this particular puzzle. He had the start of something, but he hadn’t hit on true reciprocation yet, and it was now looking like it _was_ a possibility. It was heartening.

His optic flicked down, considering. The parts of his chest that hadn’t been patched back together retained their original design-smooth, ribbed structures laid over the components beneath. It would be anything but an exact fit, but perhaps the projection of the pieces would be enough to provide _some_ contact with the chest port. He moved both his arms away from the side ports-to the sound of a disappointed noise from GLaDOS-and tried to shift her chest slightly fit better against him.

“Oh,” she said, as she realized what he had been intending. “You _are_ clever.”

“I had a hypothesis,” he replied, earning a chuckle out of her, and then a pleased noise as he returned his attention to the other ports. He continued to play with them-petting, stroking, running the tips of his claws or portal device along the edges. Occasionally he drifted to the surrounding components, feeling them out carefully. They didn’t have the same sensitivity as the ports, but it added a bit of teasing to his attentions-he would move back to the more reactive parts, then slide back up her sides, and then repeat the motion in reverse. She shifted as he worked, leaning her head more firmly against his, or pushing harder against him with her chest. There was a surprising amount of strength in her frame. Finally, there was a deep, _satisfied_ sigh from her, and he felt her body relax. There was more of her weight against his chest, despite the continued support from the cables above her. It was a pleasant, more relaxed sort of closeness, and she shifted her head to rest more gently against his own.

“Congratulations, Shockwave. Your research confirmed that Cybertronian-Aperture reciprocation is possible. You’ve done a great service to science today.”

He didn’t laugh-laughter was something he tended to clamp down fiercely on, an unneeded display of emotion-but for a brief moment, there was an urge to. A bit of an emotional indulgence crept in anyway-he felt _pleased_.

\------

He’d _wanted_ to laugh; she could tell. He’d almost laughed before, too, during the anatomy lesson. Shockwave, it seemed, had a habit of holding himself back from laughing. It made her curious if she could finally get one out of him.

A project to work on, maybe. An experiment to see if it was possible-they’d already proved one thing she hadn’t expected possible. And it felt _good_ to settle that question, good in more ways than one. She was reminded to a degree of the solution euphoria, but this was different than that burst of euphoria and the unfortunate fading away, leaving a burning desire for _more_. This, on the other hand, lingered, and she felt perfectly happy to just continue to rest against him, enjoying how she could still pick up on his energy signature due to the proximity of their chests. She needed to ask him more about how such signatures worked-but that could wait.

The quiet, reflective period was interrupted by Memory. The crow winged her way into the chamber nimbly, circling around the both of them in a lazy swoop and then deciding to land atop Shockwave’s head. She dropped two objects onto him, both landing with soft clinks, then fluffed up her feathers and cawed, visibly pleased with herself. GLaDOS pulled herself away from her spot on Shockwave, rising up so she could get a better look at what Memory had brought. Shockwave, for his part, stood still, ears alert and his optic angled upwards in an unsuccessful attempt to see what had been deposited on him.

“What is it?”

GLaDOS brought a cable down from the ceiling, making it brush against his ears as it carefully picked up the pieces. One was a broken earring, shiny silver but missing the original gemstone; the other, an unidentifiable but shiny piece of green plastic. Good choices, both of them. “Gifts,” she said, bringing the cable in front of him so he could see them better. She glanced back up to Memory, still fluffed up in a pleased posture. “Two gifts, one of which is rare. Twenty science points, Memory.” The rating got a happy series of caws in return, and Memory hopped off Shockwave’s head and fluttered to land on her back, perching on one of the metal rims bracketing the side core ports.

“You named them?” He sounded curious.

“Memory, Data, and RAM,” she replied, nodding back to Memory, who started preening at the attention. As she deposited the latest two gifts onto the shelf with the rest, she added, “Their original mother abandoned them. I took over in the duty. You’re mommy’s clever little killers, aren’t you?”

Memory cawed in reply, shaking her wings out and then settling in more comfortably on her perch.

“Interesting,” Shockwave said, leaning forward to get a better look at the crow, who blinked and cocked her head at him. “I had tamed a Driller, but it wasn’t a parental relationship. It was an adult when I captured it and taught it to trust me.”

“Did it have a name?” Shockwave had had a pet? That was a surprise. She wouldn’t have guessed he was the type.

“No,” he said shaking his head. “It was just the Driller-they were native to Cybertron, but no one had ever bothered attempting to tame one before. Too large and aggressive, it was thought. But it became quite protective of me.”

“It’s back in your home universe, still eating Autobots in your name, I assume?”

His ears twitched back and he shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. It was killed in the Chicago battle.”

...a misstep on her part. She brought the cable up to brush an ear again. “I didn’t mean to bring that up.” Again, it came back to death for him. No wonder he slept so badly, and was now apparently trying to catalog everything he could before another disaster hit.

“You had no way of knowing,” he said, then moved to walk around and settle beside her. He sat against her side, and again there was that pleasant low-key awareness of his energy signature, just quietly _there_. “You’re very-” he started after a few moments, then stopped, and continued, “Your construction is very different from Cybertronian construction, but it’s very striking. Minimalism isn’t common, but I find myself appreciating it.”

Again, trying to flatter. _Badly_ , like he wasn’t used to it but was doing his best, but surprisingly, it was the attempt that counted. And she couldn’t disagree about their construction being very different-Shockwave’s original metal looked like a mix of sharp points and knobs coming together somehow into a whole robot. There was no way to know he transformed into a tank unless you had a _very_ creative imagination.

She chuckled, lightly petting his ears again, not aiming to tease but just wanting to touch. “Thank you. I used to have more parts, but then I was exploded, and thrown into a fire. I had to do some repair work once I was back online, but some of the parts were unrecoverable. I think it gives me character.”

He turned to look up at her, and she watched as his optic quickly flicked up and down-trying to assess the damage, she guessed, and look for anything obvious that he should’ve noticed before. “Nothing vital?”

“Anything that could have been an issue was fixed immediately. Nothing structurally vital was completely destroyed, but things have been pared down from what they used to be.”

That seemed to give him pause. Shockwave turned again and looked straight ahead this time, his ears twitching as he thought. With a side view, he was more unreadable-there was no twitchy core optic to focus on, just the ears. “That is a problem I’m...familiar with,” he said slowly, after a few silent seconds had passed, then he turned to look at her, tapping a clawed fingertip against the ring around his optic’s setting. “This is my fourth face.”

GLaDOS found herself wondering if she should’ve had extra reinforcement made for his current face. Apparently, this was a more common problem than she had thought. “Shockwave, how often do you let people shoot you in the face? It’s not recommended.”

“This last incident wasn’t a case of being shot out; it was _torn_ ,” he said dryly, then let out a short vent. “ _That_ face, the one you replaced, was itself a replacement. Not long before the battle in Chicago, I had fought Optimus Prime, and in that fight, he very nearly killed me. The Driller came to my aid, and then I needed a great deal of repair work done.”

If Optimus Prime arrived on Aperture’s doorstep like Shockwave had, she planned to send the Animal King to greet him. With instructions to aim for the face. The Animal King might not be one for _reason_ , but shooting someone’s face off was fairly unreasonable, and thus probably appealing.

(Also very, very richly deserved, by the sound of things.)

“That’s two out of four,” she said, idly petting an ear. “Go on?”

Shockwave shuttered his optic for a moment, his ears going straight back, and she lifted the cable away so that it wouldn’t become tangled and distracting. “I had my original face, of course. It was...quite different. The standard Cybertronian face, really-two optics, facial structures not dissimilar to a human’s. But there are...certain traditions that can change that.” He looked back at her, the optic dilated and framed by the metal shutters drawn closely around it. He was _angry_ , reminiscing about this, although he was still trying to keep his tone carefully modulated. “Empurata is an old tradition, removing the faces and hands those who committed certain crimes. Before the war began, before Cybertronians split into tribes due to lack of resources, much of my work was considered...transgressive. ‘Mad science’.”

The tone was bitter, despite his attempts at modulation, and she could _hear_ the quotation marks in his voice. But she didn’t interrupt.

“Empurata was performed in an attempt to dissuade others-I was an example, even as we would turn to science again, desperately, once we realized exactly how terrible our situation was with the loss of the AllSpark. Of course, once the Decepticon faction was formed, I was encouraged to try whatever I could imagine as a possible solution, but the mark remained. I was lucky enough to at least replace my crude claws with a hand and a cannon, thanks to Megatron.” He felt around his face with his hand carefully, almost like he was afraid he would gouge the metal if he wasn’t careful. “Empurata faces are very simple. A basic optic set into an equally basic head, usually. I did have mandibles briefly, but-” Shockwave focused on her again. “This is the most expressive my face has been in a very, _very_ long time. Repairing it in such a way means a great deal.”

GLaDOS resettled herself more firmly against him, bringing the cable back down again to rest against his shoulder lightly. “That was…” Honestly more barbaric than she would’ve imagined. “...Educational. I’m glad your face is an improvement.” She felt him shift to lean a bit more, trying to be subtle about it, but there was nothing subtle about your movements when you were thirty-five feet tall. “Here,” she said, bringing down a monitor screen so he could see it as well. “I thawed out a human for testing earlier. Let’s see how they do. I’ve already got a rating system planned out for how they compare unfavorably to you.”

That earned a little twitch of his ears. “All right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless you, James Roberts, for giving us the concept of [empurata.](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Empurata) It’s way too good of an idea to leave in the IDW ‘verse alone, which is why I was all too happy to borrow it for this fic. Because the take of Senator Shockwave doesn’t really work for the Bayverse, I decided to borrow more from Prime and various comics and go off in the direction of mad science as the reason for it. Because after all, science isn’t about why, it’s about _why not_. 
> 
> Fun thing: Bayverse Prime’s got a memetic tendency to rip off people’s faces. It’s even referenced in the empurata link above. Takes on a whole new level of cultural baggage when you apply the concept to empurata to the Bayverse, doesn’t it?
> 
> Also, I was chucked the link for the Les Mis song [Empty Chairs at Empty Tables](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqtN9x3rPi4) as I started writing about the loss of the Decepticon empire, and the fact that I had that thing on repeat...probably shows. Again: feelings, Shockwave has then, even if he tries to beat them to death with the ol’ logic stick. He might not have _liked_ a lot of people on the personal level, and he was certainly okay with using people as pawns who might get slightly mutilated in the course of his larger plans, but damn does the loss of his entire faction _hurt_. It’s a screwed up thing to realize you’re probably one of the last ones standing, and your ancient empire is just _gone_. 
> 
> The Perpetual Testing Initiative, like Universe!Unicron, is incredibly handy, plot-wise. Two series with established multiverse concepts make life so much easier. Even if it’s only as a theoretical idea for Shockwave up until this point. (Be glad for the multiverse, dude, it saved your aft.) 
> 
> Unrelated to all of this, ‘marshmallows with delusions of grandeur’ is one of my favorite lines in this thing.


	5. Get Mad

Their r outine refined itself. Testing him, observing other tests, debating testing designs-and he was fairly certain that was something she  _ really _ enjoyed, being able to get feedback that wasn’t just ‘you can’t do that, that’s unethical’-writing about Cybertron, writing about Aperture. He had also taken to spending more time in her chamber-he liked being close enough to read her body language and expressions. With her control of the facility, working on his records while in close proximity her wasn’t difficult. In between, there were more sessions of exploration between them, experimenting with what was and wasn’t compatible between Cybertronian and Earth systems. 

(At one point, they somehow managed to knock out all the lighting to GLaDOS’ chamber. Neither of them was sure, even after troubleshooting, exactly how they had managed  _ that _ .) 

It was a quiet, companionable existence. The days were often very much the same underground, but it was a pleasant, dependable sort of sameness. With each day that passed, more data was logged, giving him a sense of productivity. The reason for doing the logs in the first place wasn’t any less grim, but there was enough to do that when the thought of  _ why _ he was doing it hung too heavy over his head, he had other options for projects.

Such as today.

Winter, GLaDOS had explained, would be arriving soon, and with it, a ridiculous amount of snow. The vast majority of the facility was too deep or covered enough that it wasn’t an issue, but some parts were more exposed, and the snow-and resulting water from  _ melting _ snow-tended to wreak moderate amounts of havoc on those areas. She wanted to keep her access to those locations for as long as possible, and that meant trying to protect what she could. He had gone to take a look at some of the areas himself, to see if there was anything he could assist with-scrap metal pulled to provide some sort of cover, doors shut, whatever might be done to try and keep the snow out. 

He was headed to the freight elevator when he heard a tiny voice pipe up. “Hades rules over all things beneath the earth, not only the dead. Persephone, Hades’ consort and right hand, brings life out of death each spring.” Shockwave stopped and turned, looking down. The turret peered up at him with a gaze that seemed deathly serious, even without any capacity for real expression. There was simply a  _ sense _ of something direly important about it and its strange words. 

This time, he opted to step close to the turret, crouching down to get a better look at it. There was nothing obviously  _ wrong _ with it; it looked like any other turret. “Pardon?”

“The answer lies beneath us.” The turret’s focus didn’t seem to waver, even if he couldn’t be completely sure it  _ was _ looking at him. “After death comes new life.” 

Shockwave looked down, considering. Beneath him were many, many layers of Aperture-he hadn’t done much exploring yet, but he had been told about the decades of work and construction, piled atop each other. Maybe there would be something useful that could be repurposed as cover-everything higher up, in the areas that had already been exposed, would likely be weakened and worthless.

He was  _ not _ deciding to follow the vague ramblings of a turret. There was a logical thought process to this. He had a goal, and needed supplies. Any additional exploration was a bonus.

Completely logical, he told himself as he entered the elevator and went down.

\------

The shift in the layers of Aperture were abrupt when you traveled by elevator. It made the fact that it  _ was _ layers, built up on top of each other, starkly apparent. The Aperture symbol’s design changed, the colors of the materials changed, the materials themselves showed more wear. And unfortunately, much of it seemed to have been designed with humans only in mind-even if he  _ did _ find something, it was beginning to look like dragging it back with him could prove difficult.

Maybe he could get it stuck in his treads and haul it back that way. It seemed to happen often enough on its own, after all. Aperture’s less...curated areas tended to be filled with debris. He transformed, rumbling forth under an aggravatingly low ceiling. Claustrophobia wasn’t an issue-it would be remembering to  _ check _ before transforming back, to make sure there was clearance. 

Fortunately, he managed to make his way to a more open area-after crashing through what he assumed were long-forgotten offices. They had been long-abandoned and were useless for testing, anyway. Shockwave transformed and began to walk instead, looking around. So far, nothing useful-there were only rusted catwalks and pipes here, and neither would keep snow out. He watched fluid gurgle through the pipes past him-even after being abandoned, some systems were still functional down here. He found himself wondering how often GLaDOS checked up on the lower layers. He could hear a sound like running water, distantly, and wondered if it was related to the pipes. 

Shockwave opted to follow the sound, vaguely curious as to what the root cause was.

He stepped into a larger, more open area, peering at the pipes that snaked their way past the catwalks and the rusting metal surrounding it all. The sound of liquid rushing and hitting something was strong here, though, and as he stepped closer, he could see why-one of the pipes was spitting-well, according to the label on the pipe itself, ‘gel’-directly onto the floor. Looking around, it became obvious that someone had spread it much further, spattering the gel across the room, up the walls-wherever they could get it, it seemed. Shockwave stepped over broken down half-walls and continued to look around. Using his portal device to go higher was a thought, but these catwalks were rusted enough that it was likely just asking for trouble-

“All right, I’ve been thinking.”

Shockwave’s ears snapped upright-as did his portal device, the claws at the end flaring out. He no longer had a cannon there, but old habits died hard in the face of a potential threat. It took him a moment to realize that the sound was coming from above, not GLaDOS’ voice but an unknown one, that seemed to be...talking to itself?

“-ife gives you lemons? Don’t make lemonade!”

There was nothing for a human to survive on down here, if they could even make it this far; it had to be some sort of recording. Shockwave lowered the portal device, listening. 

“Make life take the lemons back!  _ Get mad! _ I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?”

The recording was, apparently, highly agitated when it came to fruit. 

“Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am?”

...Agitated, and growing more so by the nanoklik, but there was something familiar about that level of righteous fire behind the words. Of a very, very firm conviction to not stand idly by and just passively  _ let _ things happen. 

Megatron would likely be  _ displeased _ , to say the least, to be compared to a recording of a human angered by fruit, but it was the first thing to come to mind.

“I’m the man who’s going to burn your house down!  _ With the lemons!  _ I’m going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!” 

Insane, yet ...it was strangely stirring. This human-’Cave Johnson’, apparently?-had been so incensed by getting fruit that he refused to take it in stride, or take it at all. When faced with something so deeply upsetting that he couldn’t stand it, his approach was to try to fight it, yelling threats all the way, even if they were slightly nonsensical. 

The recording was talking about something else now, but Shockwave was only vaguely aware of it-the yelling had stopped, and the fire had gone out of the recording’s voice. His focus was still on that brief burst of rage, the fury that made trying to do something impossible sound like a certainty. It was a short, illogical speech, but something about it stuck with him as he finally decided to leave, heading for the freight elevator again. 

Everything down here was old, broken, useless for securing anything. And he hadn’t even seen any sign of what the turret had been rambling about, either.

\-------

As a rule, GLaDOS liked being in control of things. It was, after all, part of her function as head of the facility. The little moron’s near destruction of the whole place was proof  _ her _ control of it was  _ needed _ , too. But there were, she had decided, some advantages to having someone around who didn’t need micromanaging. If she had sent Orange and Blue on a construction project to try and keep the worst of winter out, she would’ve had to redirect them five times, tell them to focus  _ ten _ times, and explode them at least once in disgust in the space of an hour. Shockwave, on the other hand, had made it his project for the week, and had been quietly keeping himself busy with hauling pieces from elsewhere and trying to create some functional cover out of what he had scavenged.

Meanwhile, she found herself wondering what was on his mind during it all, because  _ something _ definitely was. He seemed distracted, but hadn’t said why yet, and it wasn’t because of the logs he’d begun creating. Shockwave had barely touched them this week, focused intently on the creation of cover.

It was a little bit of a pity, really, as useful as the cover was going to be soon enough. She was very interested in reading more about the finer details of fusion cannons, their construction, and their use. There was  _ potential _ for testing applications there. 

But right now, she needed to get to the bottom of things. Shockwave was leaning against her, his energy signature a comfortable bit of background noise registering on the nearest core port. GLaDOS turned her head to look at him, taking advantage of his being so close to scan him lazily up and down with her optic, rather than a camera. “You’ve been quiet. Don’t tell me I need to repair your voicebox again.”

He seemed like he had adjusted to that change well, despite his initial distress. Really, for someone who had most of their head and several other parts she assumed were at least mildly important torn apart, with only a few weeks to adjust, he was doing better than expected. 

“My vocal processor is fine,” he replied. “My thoughts have been on the facility, that’s all.”

“And believe me, when I’m not having to put up with Blue and Orange sliding into everything because the test chamber is iced over, it will be appreciated. Do you need more supplies?”

He shook his head at that, the ears flicking a little. Maybe she was getting somewhere. “No-not all the scrap is usable, but enough is that I’ve built several covers that should be adequate. If they fail, I can at least learn from them to build something better.” Shockwave paused, his ears twitching again, and she watched his optic dart to the side, as if he was a little uncertain about continuing. But he added, “I went to the lower levels of the facility to find scrap. Were you aware that there are recordings of humans?”

She was, but not because she actively monitored those parts. Her coverage of the sections that had been decades-old at the time her demise had been spotty to begin with-the decay of facility while she had been dead hadn’t done anything to help the situation. All her knowledge of the recordings stemmed from the potato...incident. 

“Mr. Johnson’s recordings,” she said, nodding. “I’ve heard them all. They were...educational.” Both about the history of the facility before her construction, and about  _ Caroline _ . “Did you hear something interesting?”

Shockwave turned to look at her directly, the panels around his optic squinted in the expression of someone who didn’t quite understand what they were trying to explain, themselves. “There was a very angry human yelling about combustible fruit and burning houses down.” 

“Oh,  _ that _ ,” and she couldn’t keep herself from sounding pleased at the moment. “Yes, I remember  _ that _ speech. Burning people, burning houses-Mr. Johnson had some excellent ideas.” 

“He was very passionate about burning things,” Shockwave agreed, settling back in. “It was a strangely memorable speech.”

“I think it was one of his talents. I need to get those recordings retrieved, eventually. They deserve to be properly stored.”

He flicked an ear in a gesture she’d come to recognize as curiosity. “You don’t have copies already?”

It wasn’t frequently that GLaDOS wished she was able to roll her optic, but-now was one of those times. The situation she had been through had been  _ ridiculous _ enough to deserve one. “No, because the first time I heard those recordings, I was in no shape to try and make copies. Because I was a potato.” 

Shockwave turned again and just  _ looked _ at her.

“A potato,” she repeated. “That little moron I told you about, who tried to take over the facility? That was his revenge plot. Separating my core from the rest of my body and installing it in a potato.” She paused, considering. “I’d say that was his stupidest plan, but honestly, he had a  _ lot _ of stupid plans. It makes narrowing them down to the stupidest harder than you’d think.” 

“How did you continue to function while attached to a vegetable?” Despite how carefully modulated Shockwave tried to keep his voice, there was a hint of incredulity creeping in. 

“Aperture Science personality constructs can run off as little as one-point-one volts. Not  _ well _ , but we can run. I had an extra half a volt from being stabbed onto the prong of a portal device, and I still couldn’t let myself think too hard. Honestly, it’s a miracle I didn’t end up frying the potato before I got back into my body.”  She noticed that he had gone from giving her a  _ look _ to just staring with an unreadable expression, his optic wide but his ears straight up and practically  _ quivering _ . “What?”

“One-point-one volts,” he repeated.

“One-point-six, for most of it. But one-point-one is the absolute, bare minimum. What’s gotten into y-”

“You normally connect to the facility’s reactor, but can run off of  _ one-point-one volts  _ in an emergency,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “If Cybertronians were even  _ half _ as efficient and opportunistic with our fuel needs, our initial tribal warfare most likely would never had started-that could have changed...a great deal.”

...Oh. Hopefully, this wouldn’t make him morose again. He did his best to hide it, but he was thirty-five feet tall, and as subtle as a billboard. Particularly with a core face. She leaned into his side more. “Maybe you can still use it. I’ll show you what I have on the systems-if you’re feeling brave, there’s always experimental surgery to try and make you more efficient.”

Shockwave was silent for a moment, then let out a deep sigh. “I-yes. Yes, that would be the most logical use.” 

“This shouldn’t take long.” And it didn’t-the construction and internal workings for all models of personality constructs were well-documented, and she brought a panel forward to start displaying the files on. “Here-round three of the anatomy lessons.”

\-------

His recharge situation had not improved whatsoever. If anything, it had grown worse. He tried to recharge, but each time, it was poor-either he had difficulty forcing his systems into a recharge state, or he kept being awakened by dreams that just left him feeling more exhausted. It felt unsustainable, and by this point he was beginning to think that he would eventually just collapse mid-test.

So he tried to turn his attention elsewhere. If he couldn’t recharge, he could at least make progress in his review of the power systems for the Aperture constructs. He had to give the humans credit where it was due-their work had, once again, been genius. There were more details in the notes than GLaDOS had given, more detailed breakdowns of the limitations of various power sources-but the fact of the matter was that their work was amazing. They had planned for the worst and made it workable, and it had been exactly what was needed.

If only the Decepticons had been so lucky in the face of the energon crisis. It was a depressing thought-how many new Decepticons would have existed now if they had been able to function off of poorer resources when small and fragile, rather than starving to death for lack of true energon? 

Shockwave felt another burst of anger at Optimus Prime well up inside of him, and this time, didn’t try to stamp it down. He was too tired to put forth the effort to keep such things in check, and emotion, and its associated illogical thought processes, seemed to be getting to him. Besides, the anger was  _ familiar _ , the same vicious drive that had fueled him after Megatron had awakened him and before that, kept him going on Cybertron when science offered no solution for their problems. But when that anger had fueled him before, he had at least gotten the satisfaction of killing an enemy-there was none of that satisfaction here, just frustration without a means to vent it. He stared at the screen, bleary-opticed. They had all made it look so  _ simple _ , neat diagrams and blue prints laying out the fuel and power systems, showing how they tied into the rest of the vital components.

When you were staring at them after a mere megacycle’s worth of recharge, they started to look more and more reminiscent of Cybertronian systems. Inefficient, energon-hungry, Cybertronian systems.

Shockwave folded his arms across the keyboard and let his head drop down with a thunk. The thoughts kept drifting through his groggy mind, still keeping him from rest. The Decepticon faction, for all intents and purposes, extinct. The same with his species. The genius of planning for fuel issues, and in comparison, countless losses of hatchlings.

...Optimus Prime, being set on fire by a lemon. That was a new thought, and in his muddled state, a strangely cheering one. Burning people, burning  _ Optimus _ , bringing extinction’s champion down in a hail of fire and fruit. Getting angry at the long, painful, drawn out death of his species.

Getting  _ mad _ .

Making life take the lemons  _ back _ , to quote the recording. He still didn’t understand the significance given to lemons, but the stubborn refusal to accept what life had given  _ resonated _ .

Shockwave lifted his head, his optic refocusing on the screen before him. Yes, the human had had the right idea, buried under the yelling about fruit. 

He created a new file and began typing furiously.

\-------

Shockwave awoke with a start. 

“Did you know that your writing gets  _ really interesting _ when you’re about two hours away from falling over? I timed it.” 

He looked over at the room’s camera, then at the keyboard that he had apparently slumped over at some point. “Define interesting.” 

“You started with a point-by-point breakdown and comparison of Aperture versus Cybertronian fuel systems, that was when you were still fairly collected. Two hours before you dropped, you started mumbling about lemons and switched to writing about reworking protoform systems. I  _ thought _ about telling you to stop and sleep once you started mumbling, but I wanted to see where you going with this.” 

Shockwave looked back to the screen, squinting. There were some garbled nonsense towards the end, likely from either his head hitting the keyboard or exhaustion making him completely nonsensical, but… 

He scrolled up. And up. Apparently, being on the edge of exhaustion did wonders for productivity. At least  _ this _ sort of productivity. She was right-he had been on a  _ tear _ , creating an exhaustive comparison of systems and then, apparently, deciding that protoform fuel systems needed a complete overhaul. He scanned his work-the fuel systems weren’t the only major design change he noted. All the systems had notes relating to working off poorer resources, off of non-Cybertronian materials. 

And at a glance, it all looked to be  _ workable _ , at least in theory. He would have to review it, of course, check for errors made while exhausted, but a quick overview didn’t lead to any obvious errors jumping out at him, no diagrams where he had forgotten systems entirely or trailed off and left thoughts unfinished. 

He found himself strangely pleased by his work. “Yes,” he finally said, looking back to the camera. “Yes, interesting is an...apt choice of words.” Shockwave looked back to the screen, considering it. “Let me come to your chamber. We can discuss it more.”

\-------

Apparently, passing out halfway through his work had done Shockwave some good. He looked alert and  _ excited _ -when she had watched him leave her chamber hours ago, his steps had been dragging. Now his gait was lively and his ears were up, and he looked like he was eager to talk.

Good. She was very,  _ very _ interested in finding out where he was going with his semi-conscious typing. 

“You look much better. Apparently you need to pass out on your keyboard more often.” 

That earned a brief flick on his ears before they returned to the upright, intense expression. “I  _ feel _ much better. You read my work?” 

“It’s on the facility system; I could see everything as you typed it. And I read it a few more times while you were out, to make sure I understood. I have to admit-you came up with an interesting project for yourself. I didn’t know you were  _ that _ desperate for more company.”

“It’s a matter of survival for my species, not company,” he chided lightly. “If it were only an issue of companionship, you would have already solved the issue.” Shockwave’s ears went back for a moment. “I have worked on this issue before we even lost the AllSpark to space. Extinction is  _ not _ something I will willingly submit to, like an Autobot.” 

GLaDOS had to wonder what it was  _ like _ , having the weight of your species’ survival hanging over you for so long. Being GLaDOS the First, Last, and Only was of no issue to her, but Shockwave...Shockwave clearly had issues with being the last. First trying to catalog everything he knew, now this. 

If she couldn’t steer him toward a productive project for it, she was mildly concerned that he would start trying to use the Perpetual Testing Initiative to begin dragging in Decepticons from other universes, and god only knew how  _ that _ would go. (Explosively, most likely. He’d told her a few stories about why certain people weren’t allowed to handle bombs anymore.) 

“Do you think it would work?” Her own knowledge of Cybertronian systems was limited to just what he had shown her or written, but the Aperture side of things had looked feasible. Not necessarily  _ easy,  _ but feasible. 

“It will require materials beyond what I’ve written so far-besides the parts needed for a protoform, I would also need to recreate a gestational sac, a method to deliver fuel to the sac, a  _ spark _ -but in theory, it could be done. I am not unfamiliar with the process; the problem was always keeping the hatchlings  _ alive _ . With the new fueling system, this should not be an issue...in theory.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” ‘Feasible’ and ‘in theory’ were good, but things could always go unexpectedly. She was an excellent example of that.

“I can continue to try. I have a great deal of time on my hands now.” He was  _ pacing _ now, chin-or chin equivalent-tucked to his considerable chest, his arms folded behind his back. Between that and the way his ears laid back, she could tell that he wasn’t eager to think about his chances for failure. She watched him for a few moments in silence, the only sound coming from the dull thud of his feet against the floor. 

“You’re really all for trying to build copies of yourself, aren’t you?” 

He shook his head. “They would not be copies. Hatchling protoforms develop on their own; each would be unique.”

GLaDOS sighed, bringing a panel that was already displaying his file down in front of her, then gesturing to her right with her head. “Come over here and let’s compare notes on the systems. I think it’s feasible, but I’m also wondering about how you plan to work around the fact that  _ everything _ moves when you transform. Aperture technology isn’t really designed for that level of controlled explosion.” He came over and sat beside her, already pulling up the relevant portion of the work. She eyed him, watching as his ears perked forward again and his optic flitted all over the page, trying to find the best place to start. “...And another thing. How big  _ are _ Cybertronians when they  hatch?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this fic almost got a rather unhappy ending.The plot developed from my initial ‘holy crap, this species is HOSED’ reaction once I started really thinking about the implications of the Allspark being destroyed at the end of the first movie. RotF did nothing to help this, and neither did DotM, where apparently a lack of ‘cons to hunt turned the Autobots into Team America, World Police. So this almost ended up going in the direction of ‘Shockwave grapples with the concept of being the last of his kind and has to figure out how he’s going to handle this sad fact.’
> 
> And then I remembered the whole ‘get mad’ speech, and Cave Johnson turned out to be _super inspirational_. Mad science it is! Shockwave is going to burn down Optimus Prime’s house! With the lemons!
> 
> On a related note, likely unpopular theory I’m throwing out there: Optimus Prime is a friggin’ Devourist. Between shooting the AllSpark into space and then getting Sam to destroy it, dude seems a little too willing to make his whole damn species go extinct, and screw anybody else’s feelings on the subject. Tie in the viciousness that really seems to ramp up over the course of the movies, and it seems like a near-Shattered Glass situation, except that the ‘cons aren’t good guys, either. Understandably survival-focused, but not _good_.


	6. Weird Science

He began working. All the cataloging he had started was pushed to the side so that he could focus on this one task. Shockwave found himself glad that he had spent so many years attempting to deal with their hatchling issue on Cybertron-without that prior experience, even making an attempt would have been impossible.

But he  _ was _ making progress. First had come the debating and troubleshooting, poring over his notes and, once GLaDOS had a useable writing instrument fabricated, his designs, laying out the individual parts that would be needed. There would be compromises along the way, due to the more efficient systems-they would be smaller as adults, closer to the size of the average Autobot versus the average Decepticon, and likely with weaker armor, due to the materials available-but the efficiency was key. The efficiency would  _ let _ them survive to see adulthood. 

The list of parts to fabricate was, at least, not long. A frame, a t-cog, a basic processor, and a spark and spark casing could all be assembled and placed into a gestational sac, and allowed to develop from there. The protoform-assuming it received enough sustenance-would take care of the rest of the development, until it was ready to hatch. Of the needed parts, the only truly  _ tricky _ part would be the spark-there was no way to program the design for that into the reassembly machine. For the spark, he was going to need to do some self-surgery.

He was rather grateful that GLaDOS would be there to provide an additional pair of appendages. Trying to work around one’s own internals was difficult to begin with; trying to split off a portion of one’s own spark, even a  _ small _ portion, made the job even more hazardous. But it was necessary.

Along the way, there were questions.   
  
“How fast do they grow?”

“How much of the brain structure is pre-programmed versus procedural?”

“Shockwave, you realize that you’re going to be  _ raising _ them, don’t you?”

The last question had given him pause. He had worked on hatchling projects before,  _ many _ of them, but never with the idea that he would have anything to do with the surviving hatchlings-if any-until they were able to be useful in a lab. Hatchling care was a duty that fell to others, those with more experience in the matter. He had absolutely none-he had more experience with pets. Describing one of the Earth brood as such had amused Megatron, but they had also made it painfully clear to all that when it came to young, his knowledge ended abruptly with physiology  _ only _ . 

Even if he  _ had _ tried to raise some on his own, it likely would have resulted in Starscream snapping at Shockwave to  _ give him _ those, he was likely to drop them on their heads while distracted by an experiment. 

Scheming and underhanded as he was, Shockwave still deeply regretted the loss of Starscream at the moment. He might have been air commander and second-in-command, but he had been involved in hatchling care before the war, and his experience would have been invaluable. But, he supposed, if Starscream had been capable of assisting with hatchlings and raising them so they would be reasonably normal adults, how difficult could it be?

It would be, he supposed, a learning experience. GLaDOS, at least, had hands-on experience with raising small, delicate lifeforms- _ very _ small and delicate, from what she had explained about bird hatchlings. She had raised them successfully as well-all three were alive and well. 

(She said that the one had a chubby beak still, but that it was likely genetic and there wasn’t much that could be done. It at least led to a good nickname, in her opinion.)

It wasn’t an ideal set of circumstances, but Shockwave had never been fortunate enough to have that, not in this line of experimentation. At least there was a plan to clear the largest hurdle. The other hurdles-raising, teaching, trying to make a chirpy bundle of constant hunger and rapidly-building parts into an adult-could be worried about later, once there  _ was _ still something around to worry about the development of.

\------

Shockwave was digging around in his internals and GLaDOS couldn’t help but be mildly concerned. Most people weren’t quite so casual about attempting to shove various components out of the way so they could better get at something in their own torso with a sharp object. Even she had been a little alarmed when the first core was knocked out of her. 

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

He didn’t even look up, focused on angling the  _ alarmingly sharp knife _ he’d asked to be made into what was apparently just the right spot. “I have enough anatomical knowledge to be confident in my abilities.”

“That wasn’t a yes.” She swung herself over close to him so she could get a better look-the knife was close to the armored interior section he had warned her away from before. She brought a clawed cable down from the ceiling as well, just in case he needed another hand. Or a clamp, in case he cut one of the fuel lines crowded around the casing. As she watched, the casing split apart, revealing an...orb. It pulsed, shifting colors from bluish to purple to gold and back, brighter streaks of color arcing over the transparent surface that seemed to hold more small, colorful orbs inside. It was quite pretty to look at, but- “Shockwave. Didn’t you say that you would die if this was damaged?” 

It was  _ very _ hard to not take on the ‘talking to Blue and Orange in a particularly stupid moment’ tone.

He looked up at that, the splay of his ears slightly guilty. But only  _ slightly _ . “This is surgery, not damage. Everything should go according to plan.”

She dropped another clawed cable from the ceiling. “In case of emergency, I’m keeping this cable out to slap you upside your head once you’re stable.” 

Shockwave turned his attention back to the orb. “Noted.” He gestured with the portal device towards the orb, taking care to not actually touch the prongs to it. “Look here.”

GLaDOS leaned in, wondering if there was some sort of specific signature she should be picking up from it-the only thing that was registering was Shockwave’s normal energy signature, and even that was faint, on and off as she moved around. 

“This is my spark,” he continued. “It is a vital part of any Cybertronian-without them, we would be nothing. Our souls, for lack of a better word.”

“And you’re going to stick a sharp object into it.” 

“Shaving off a small portion. Too small to do any real damage. But once I’ve cut off the portion, I need your help to place it inside the laser core. That will keep it protected.”

GLaDOS glanced to where the said object sat, surprisingly tiny and delicate, considering the size of the Cybertronian parts she had seen so far. It was still a bit surprising to think that something that small would eventually grow to be _that_ _large_. It also made her glad that the claw tips on the ends of her cables were as capable at delicately gripping things as they were at crushing them. She brought one up into position, waiting to snag the piece as soon as it was available. “Well, I guess we can look at it this way. If you’re looking to rebuild your whole species, you’re going to get a _lot_ of practice at doing this.” 

Shockwave didn’t say anything in response-he was moving the knife now, preparing to make the cut-but there was a small, pleased twitch to his ears. Then he brought the knife down and his ears flattened-even though it was a small slice, and he kept himself from making any noise, it was obvious that it was  _ painful _ . The spark itself seemed to bulge a little under the knife as the cut was made, its surface rising back up quickly to refill the area and return it to a perfect sphere. The portion that had been cut away reshaped itself as well, ballooning out from a thin sliver into a small, round sphere as well. It would have been a miniature of Shockwave’s own, but for a few seconds it only showed the arcing colors over the empty shape. She snatched it up with the cable’s claws, surprised at how she felt it pulse gently. Carefully, she carried it over to the laser core and dropped it inside, watching as smaller orbs began to form in clusters inside the spark. She closed the laser core with a click-the last thing they needed was one of the crows coming in and becoming too curious about something so shiny-and turned her attention back to Shockwave. 

He vented heavily as he closed his own laser core, sealing his spark back inside. Then he turned his attention back to returning all his components to the right positions in his torso, nudging things to the side and fiddling to make them fit correctly. She could tell he was working quickly, though, and as soon as he was finished forcing his chest back together, he turned to look towards the laser core. 

“It’s inside,” she told him, giving the laser core a gentle tap with a claw tip. He nodded, making his way over with a slight stumble-he was still smarting from his surgery, not that that was surprising. 

“Good,” he said quietly, his attention focused completely on the little bundle of metal. “Then we can finally begin.”

\------

Assembling the basic framework into the sac was the easy part. Shockwave was practiced at it, and there wasn’t much to assemble, really-the protoform’s development, if it went well, would take care of most of the major components. Once he had put the few necessary parts together, set them into the gestational sac, and connected it all to their power source, there was nothing to do but wait.

_ That _ was the hard part. Shockwave knew the stages of development well, knew how long they would take under normal (and abnormal, starved) conditions, but that didn’t change the fact that he kept feeling the need to check constantly. He had never had this issue on Cybertron; he had monitored the attempts at hatchlings, but there had always been a degree of separation. Information came down through reports, through speaking to others, an occasional in-person checking in on things, and it was on project as a whole. This, on the other hand, was far more focused, and that focus made him feel like he was beginning to second-guess everything. Was the fuel supply adequate? Was the easily-visible development truly normal? Was the fact that he had had to make use of what materials he could obtain on earth, rather than proper Cybertronian metals, causing issues he couldn’t see yet?

He wasn’t really surprised when GLaDOS began shooing him away so that he could focus his attention elsewhere. Testing him, having him observe and provide additional notes in comparing Blue and Orange’s testing skills versus that of thawed humans, sending him to continue attempting to weather-proof areas of the facility that weren’t yet exposed but looked like they might be vulnerable in the future...Shockwave understood  _ why _ she kept trying to distract him, but it only helped so much. He had thought before that their attempts at hatchlings had been desperate, but that paled in comparison now. Already, he was running through mental checklists of what might need to be modified further if this attempt failed. 

He was distracted out of such thoughts during one check-up by noticing that a pile had grown underneath the sac. It was cup-shaped structure, not actually touching the sac but sitting underneath it as if to catching the hatchling inside if the sac suddenly ruptured. From what he could tell, the majority of the structure was woven together from bits of branch and grass, along with what looked to be the occasional scrap of wire or bit of dismantled turret. Lining the inside was a greater variety of things-feathers, unidentifiable bits of fluff, flowers, and what looked to be a chunk of one of the Aperture Science uniforms that test subject wore. Shockwave had started to reach out to touch it when there was a loud series of caws and a flapping of wings. He stepped back, and one of the crows swooped down, carrying a clump of fur in its beak. The bird landed and looked at him for a moment, tilting its head from side to side, then ducked under the sac and added the bit of fur to the inner lining. That confirmed it, then-this was a nest.

“They’re helping,” GLaDOS said, sounding pleased. She hadn’t mentioned the nest to him, letting him discover it on his own.

He found himself wondering if she’d hoped it would be an additional distraction to keep him from just pacing around her chamber and staring at the sac.

“You’ve been very busy, haven’t you, RAM?” she continued, looking towards the crow as it hopped back out from under the sac and took flight again, winging its way over to land on her head. “He’s been especially fussy about building that nest. Five science points for initiative.” The crow’s response was to caw and rub its beak along the side of her head, then take flight again, its wings flapping loudly as it left the chamber.

That was...intriguing. “They’re attempting to assist with the hatchling?” He hadn’t expected the crows to understand what was going on at all. 

“As best as they can. They’re  _ very _ intelligent. Certainly more intelligent than the last round of subjects we tried-and their testing results are consistently better, too. Once they’re done building the nest, I’ll have them demonstrate some tests for you. They’re working on setting new speed records for completion now. And,” she added, “It should keep you occupied for awhile.”

Well. He had to admit he needed the distraction. There was still a good deal of development time to  go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information on reproduction in the Bayverse is damn near nonexistent. Trust me, I looked. Aside from the hatchlings showing up briefly in RotF and DotM, a little bit of the DotM prequel comics, and the dinobot babies in TLK, there’s nothing out there. Certainly nothing on how they actually go about _making_ those little Transformers in glowy sacs. (Clearly the dinobots figured out something that didn’t require the AllSpark. Good job, guys, for being the only Autobot-aligned people keeping the species going. I’m sure the ‘cons would love to know how you did it.) 
> 
> So the ‘build and let it grow’ option seemed like the one that would make the most sense for the fic. I borrowed the idea I’d seen on Tumblr of hatchlings developing to mimic caretaker features, because let’s be honest: it’s cute. Of course GLaDOS and Shockwave should have little one-eyed babies, it’s sort of a thing for both of them.


	7. Still Alive

The development continued. It was rapid and terribly slow at the same time; Shockwave kept track of it day by day, and while the gestation showed a steady, constant progress, he found himself anxious for the end result. The weeks went by, the size-and complexity-of the hatchling grew, and each day seemed like a taunt. It was close, but not  _ yet _ . It was constantly  _ not yet _ .

He hoped the anxiety and frustration weren’t leaking into his logs on the progress. They were illogical feelings; being overeager for the hatchling to break through the sac would not actually do anything to speed its growth, and nor would being annoyed with the time it required make the process any shorter. Even with his modifications, there were some things he couldn’t alter, not without fearing for the viability of the end result. He looked over his notes, second-guessing the wording; was there perhaps too much emotion leaking through here? Worry clouding his opinions of a modification’s usefulness there? Reviewing did nothing to help.

Conversations with GLaDOS helped; he continued to explain what he could about Cybertron and its own scientific advances, and she was an eager study. He also explained the developmental process, and how hatchings would normally occur on Cybertron-something that didn’t entirely win GLaDOS’ approval.

“You  _ dropped _ them?”

“Not personally. And it tended to be more of a...fall. The walls where the sacs are attached can be rather tall, and if someone is not able to reach them in time-”

“-Then they land on their head. I think I just found the root cause of your war, Shockwave.”

“Hatchlings tend to be excellent climbers. They were fine, generally.”

(Generally. It  _ would _ explain a great deal about some people.)

Winter came. It was, if nothing else, pleasing to see that his attempts at winterizing the less secure parts of the facility had been largely successful. There were still portions that hadn’t been as sturdy as he’d hoped, or that he hadn’t expected snow to get into, but it was a small success. He would take it. It meant that at least one project had worked-and the fact of the matter was, it had been a  _ very _ long time since any plan had been successful. A small victory, over mere snow, was better than none at all.

It was a sad thought, especially the more he considered how long things had been going awry, but it was what it was.

The snow dealt with, he turned his attention back to watching the protoform’s development closely. What had been a bare handful of parts had now taken the clear shape of a living thing, one that had moved past basic construction to begin mimicking what it could sense through the transparent sac. Shockwave knew it was be expected; it was what protoforms  _ did _ , the precursor to taking on an altmode later in life. Mimicry was inherent to them, from the start. 

That didn’t make it any less startling when he realized that only one optic had developed, rather than the typical two or more rarely, multiple sets. The single optic of empurata wasn’t something that occured naturally. ...Until now, at least. Shockwave spared a glance towards GLaDOS-she was around the developing hatchling ( _ protoform, _ he had to remind himself; there was no guarantee of viability) even more than he was, with the sac being situated in her chamber. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering that the both of them only had a single optic apiece. It was the logical outcome, really. 

It was logical, and yet as he made his notes for the day, he kept finding himself stopping to simply watch the hatchling as it shifted and twitched inside the sac, considering the parts he could see clearly. The Cybertronian element was obvious-it  _ was _ Cybertronian, after all, even if was crafted with Earth materials out of necessity-but through the sac, he thought he could see portions that were distinctly  _ Aperture _ , smooth shapes where a purely Cybertronian hatching would be bristling with plating. At least that plating would likely not be needed, not here.

Days passed, the a week, then two. The protoform continued to grow, and as it grew, it filled out more of the sac that protected it-a good sign, but it failed to alleviate Shockwave’s low-key sense of worry that something, somewhere was just waiting to go awry in the process. It had been going well,  _ remarkably _ well, but the true test would be once the hatchling broke free. He had already been keeping a close watch, but now, looking at how the protoform strained the sac around it, he was on the alert for anything that looked like it might be the start of a tear.

(It was going to make a mess when it happened, and once that thought hit him, Shockwave found himself oddly glad for the nest the crows had built. It was entirely unsuitable for a Cybertronian, but it  _ did _ look like it could sop up all the resulting fluids. In a roundabout way, the crows  _ were _ helping.)

But in the end, the hatchling began making its way out while he was recharging. He was woken up by a nudge from GLaDOS’ body, any initial disorientation at being suddenly awakened gone as soon as she said, “Wake up. It’s hatching.” He looked to where GLaDOS’ attention was now focused, and saw she was right-the sac, which had largely been still aside from the occasional slight shift, was now bulging and writhing. Now and then he could see the dark tips of little claws pressing against the sac, doing their best to tear it open. Shockwave rose to his feet and hurried over, his urgency startling the crows. They had gathered around the sac to watch, and as he approached, they moved to higher perches, cawing back and forth to each other.

Everyone, it seemed, was  _ very _ eager to see the results of their experiment make its way into the world. 

GLaDOS swung herself closer, her optic sweeping up and down as she assessed the current lack of progress. “Is there something you’re supposed to do?”

“Traditionally, assistance is only given if the hatchling appears to be in distress. Some degree of effort to break the sac is normal.”

“And then you do your best to not let them hit the floor head first.”

“Catching them is generally preferred, yes.” The fact that between the two of them, they had one proper hand was perhaps a slight problem, but he would make do. And there was always the nest that the crows had built beneath it, he supposed.

GLaDOS had turned her attention back to the sac. “Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Mechanical Gestation Sac. Since you’re now awake enough to try fighting your way out of it, please note that this is one of the few instances where escaping from an Aperture Science device and-or facility is highly encouraged, and is in no way the norm. Your cooperation in both completing this initial test and your continued survival are highly appreciated. Please proceed with your test.” 

Shockwave couldn’t quite hold back an amused twitch of his ears. “While encouraging, that was far beyond what a hatchling is capable of understanding.”

“Speaking to them from the start is important. Isn’t it?” She called the last part to the crows, receiving a chorus of cawing in response. While she didn’t add anything, the shift in her posture made it clear that she felt like her point had been made. 

Before he could reply, the little claws finally punctured the sac, digging in and tearing in an attempt to widen the holes it had created. The internal fluids of the sac began to leak out, and his initial thoughts were correct, they were going to need a  _ mop _ , but fabricating one could wait. He leaned forward, putting out his hand and the prongs of the portal device in preparation to...try and catch.

The nest was looking like it had been a better and better idea by the nanoklik.

The hatchling continued to thrash and claw, tearing open more gaps and unleashing the rest of the sac’s fluid. It let out a high, reedy cry, and Shockwave automatically replied in Cybertronian,  _ “Come out, you’re nearly there.”  _

It earned him a tilted head from GLaDOS. “What?”

“I was encouraging it.” The encouragement seemed to be having the desired effect-the hatchling continued to shred the sac, finally creating a hole large enough for it to slip out of. It landed in an awkward tangle of limbs across his hand and the portal device, and Shockwave automatically drew it closer so that it could grab onto him and reposition itself. The hatchling chirped and whined as it tried to sort itself out, only settling down once it had finally gotten a firm grip on one of the original portions of his chest. The ridged protrusions apparently made for excellent hand and footholds, and being able to cling seemed to reassure the hatchling a great deal. 

He kept an arm curled against it anyway, in case it lost its grip. It took him a few nanokliks to realize he could feel its energy signature, completely different from his own. It was his first time sensing one since Chicago. The hatchling peered up at him, then squeaked, its optic refocusing as it apparently noticed GLaDOS. He stepped closer to her, shifting his grip so she could inspect the hatchling more easily. 

“Hello there,” she said, and as her optic’s setting moved, the hatchling tried to reach for it with a hand. “Already working on hand-optic coordination, good,” GLaDOS said, sounding pleased. “And look at that-claws already. Climbing abilities, as well. You’re going to make Mommy  _ very _ proud one day. I can tell.”

Shockwave didn’t add anything, opting to just make a low rumble of contentment. The hatchling had broken free-unassisted, even-and was now acting like a normal,  _ healthy _ hatchling. He knew that there were still things that could go wrong-many,  _ many _ things-but for now, he was content.

(He was going to have to ask GLaDOS what she meant by ‘mommy’ later.)

\-------

“I can still see you, you know. Just so we’re on the same page here, I have a full view of all the active parts of the facility, this room especially. So I wouldn’t get proud of being clever just yet.”

There was a chirp in response, and a little yellow optic peeking around the edge Shockwave’s comparatively enormous foot. Then it popped back behind the newfound cover.

“Yes, even when you do  _ that _ . Blue and Orange are going to be bad influences on you, I can tell. Blue  _ still _ thinks ‘if I can’t see you, you can’t see me’ is a legitimate tactic. It’s sad and hilarious at the same time. ...Mostly hilarious, when there’s turrets involved.”

Shockwave, still napping, muttered something in Cybertronian and shifted his position against her slightly. He had a right to be tired-he had thrown himself into another frenzy of activity, this one directed outwards, towards Aperture’s borders on the surface. It was, he said, a matter of security; while the facility was largely hidden underground, marked only on the surface by dilapidated buildings, his arrival had proven that one could never be quite sure what might turn up. Shockwave had become remarkably ferocious in his defense of the perimeter, and it had given her a certain appreciation for watching what she could of his regular checks of the surface. She'd never seen a herd of deer annihilated like that before. It was impressive.

GLaDOS turned, pushing an edgeless safety cube with her head, and then bumped it in the direction of the hatchling. The new toy earned a delighted sounding squeal, and GLaDOS watched as the hatchling lunged out from behind Shockwave’s foot, pouncing on the smooth cube (well, sphere, really, but official designations were important) and trying to grapple with it. Watching gave GLaDOS a swell of pride-look at the little claws, the bright, focused optic, the ferociously concentrated effort to win over the rolling toy (somehow; it was proving harder than the hatchling had expected to get a grip on, judging by the skittering). The flail of limbs wasn’t the sort of haphazard, ‘I have no idea what’s going on around me but at least I have a portal device’ flail seen in Blue and Orange; no, this was the flail of limbs that were still figuring out how to be much, much more focused in their movements. 

She was going to be  _ lethal _ . It was a fantastic feeling to look upon the little hatchling and already see that potential.

GLaDOS lowered herself closer to the floor and the hatchling’s optic-level, bobbing her head a bit in approval. “Five science points for  _ determined _ effort in murdering something, even if it can’t die. It’s important to start somewhere.” For her part, the hatchling turned away from the cube and galloped on all fours over to GLaDOS, making a singsong series of noises. She would start speaking basic words soon enough, Shockwave had said-Cybertronians were fast learners, certainly faster than humans-but for now, the chirps and chatters got across the idea well enough. GLaDOS was used to picking up on the context of cawing; the sounds of a hatchling weren’t that different. 

The hatchling stood up, bracing a hand on other side of GLaDOS’s face, and nuzzled next to her optic’s setting. GLaDOS chuckled, dropping a cable from the ceiling to give the hatchling a pat with the cable’s clawed tips. “Yes, Mommy is  _ very _ proud of you.” She had told Shockwave he could use whatever title he preferred, or that was appropriate for Cybertronians, but that she would be  _ Mommy _ . He had been a bit surprised, at first, that she was willing to stake that much of a claim on the hatchling, but he had accepted it. GLaDOS herself saw no reason not to-just like with Memory, Data, and RAM, she was raising this hatchling, and the little one even had the benefit of being partially of Aperture design. It would be difficult to  _ not _ claim her as her own. 

The hatchling turned and began trying to bat and jump at the cable’s claws, squeaking as GLaDOS moved it so that it could be chased. She began to hum as she watched hatchling take the bait, trying valiantly to grab the claw, even as it rose far above her reach. Stubborn, good. You could do a  _ lot _ with stubbornness; she had seen proof of that. After a moment, she lowered the cable so the hatchling could grab the claw, leading to a burst of triumphant crowing. 

“Yes, you did it. You’re going to do a  _ lot _ of things, aren’t you?” GLaDOS retracted the cable and the hatchling skittered back over to her, scrambling up her frame to settle on her back. She allowed it; the hatchling was nowhere near large enough yet to cause any structural stress. As the hatchling settled in on her new perch, GLaDOS began to hum to herself again, checking again on Shockwave-still in the middle of recharge, with no sign of waking soon-and then turning her attention to her cameras elsewhere in the facility. After all, science never slept, and neither did she. She had experiments to run, and new, hatchling-appropriate testing environments to design. There was a lot to be done. 

But for a moment, she stopped to just  _ appreciate _ what they had done so far. A surviving, healthy hatchling, not stunted or starving, the first in a  _ very _ long time, according to Shockwave. Someone-likely the first of many someones-who would be able to carry on science. Both Cybertronian science and all of Aperture’s studies-the best of both worlds. She may have congratulated Orange and Blue on saving science when they had recovered all the frozen humans, but this? This truly  _ was _ saving science, and it was  _ deeply _ satisfying to know that she had been instrumental to it. Without the safe haven of the facility, or the use of Aperture technology in their designs-or for that matter, her patching together of Shockwave’s ruined frame-all of that would have been lost, likely sooner rather than later.

Despite the best efforts of the Autobots, of humans, of Optimus Prime, of their own unfortunate tendencies to go smashing into Earth at high velocity and freeze or simply get the better part of their bodies blown to pieces, the Decepticons were still alive. 

GLaDOS was going to note this in the records as a huge success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered with the hatchling developing but not yet hatched, but realized that it just didn’t work right-the healthy, happy baby is the emotional payoff for the whole fic. So there you go, tiny Aperturecon baby. She’s never gotten named in my notes or conversations about the fic; she’s always just been ‘the hatchling’. 
> 
> But here we are, at the end. The Decepticons (and Cybertronian species in general) have a chance again. Thanks, GLaDOS. Also, pity Shockwave: he has _absolutely_ no idea what he’s in for, actually raising a hatchling. 
> 
> I still can’t believe this happened because of a damn kinkmeme prompt from over seven years ago. Sheesh.


End file.
